The Happiest Place to Be This Sunday in London

On Sunday 29 May the world’s first Museum of Happiness will open at London’s first Happy Cafe, alongside a brand new app celebrating gratitude.

For all those who are in London on the long weekend, there will be plenty to keep you happy at the mini museum on Sunday: Workshops on mindfulness, improvisation, discovering your strengths and dance, Bollywood music in the evening to dance to, a gratitude tree, a post box to send letters of thanks to your friends and family, displays about the art and science of happiness, a happy bookshelf, areas of mindful colouring and origami, relaxing massage and much more!

Click here to snap up a ticket – be quick, they are going fast! 

The Museum of Happiness will offer a cheerful environment for you to explore and share what happiness means to you if you pop in from early June onwards. In addition to the happy displays and activities, there will also be regular workshops and events to improve Londoners’ happiness and well being. Register your email on the Museum website to receive a full timetable of donation-based playshops in your inbox soon. Expect laughter yoga, mindfulness, yoga nidra, singing, positive psychology classes and lots more.

Vicky Johnson, co-founder of the Museum of Happiness said, “We hope the Museum will inspire people to prioritise the things that make them happy. I’m so excited to finally open the doors to a space designed to lift people’s spirits, find some calm and meet other positive, friendly visitors.”

Canvas Cafe is London’s first Happy Cafe, in partnership with global movement Action for Happiness, whose patron is the Dalai Lama. The social enterprise cafe and creative venue supports innovation in emotional health and well being through creative events, and cultivates feelings of belonging and ownership by inviting customers to share their thoughts, ideas, secrets and stories on the walls of the cafe itself. Ruth Rogers, owner, said, “By offering people a sense of belonging, partnered with a warm welcome and the opportunity to express yourself creatively, The Canvas Cafe is already nurturing a powerful sense of community.  We’re delighted to add the Museum of Happiness and the Gratitude Garden to our Happiness Hub here in Shoreditch!”

The Gratitude Garden app helps people to cultivate gratitude through making a game out of remembering the good things in life.  The app encourages you to recall three good things that have happened in the past day.  It helps to correct our natural negativity bias – we have evolved to think about problems that need solving, rather than enjoy all the wonderful things about our lives.  So you can have a great day with one argument, and at the end of the day it’s the argument that pops into your mind.

Izzy McRae, founder of the Gratitude Garden, said, “I found keeping a record of the moments of joy in my life made a real difference to my happiness.  But it was hard to remember to record them every day, and sometimes I just didn’t feel like it.  So I created this app to make it easier and more fun to keep a gratitude journal.  Thanks to the kindness of Nev Sattentau, I was also able to use his beautiful artwork to give the app have a bit of a magical feeling.”