Courses to do with friends

This course will develop your critical appreciation of the cinema by teaching you how to read and understand film texts. We will look at the elements that underpin film form – narrative, mise en scène, cinematography, editing and sound – alongside its historical development. We will consider film style by exploring classical, post-classical and art cinema and we will examine influential critical modes of analysis, such as genre, authorship and spectatorship.

Uncover the workings of the classic one-liner, practise joke writing and find out what makes a good joke. Learn how to refine and develop your own writing skills for stand up, comedy writing and pleasure.

Explore the pleasure and challenge of sketchbooks; learn and improve your drawing skills and 'ways of seeing' and understanding, working from an exciting range of objects and artifacts in The British Museum.



Please note - meet at Montague Place entrance - the front entrance is now only for ticket holders.

Stretch, relax and feel good! This course is suitable for those who wish to enjoy the benefits of yoga at a gentle pace. Alternatives are offered if a student finds any particular postures (asanas) uncomfortable.

Learn Pilates exercises to improve your health. The course is taught at a gentle and enjoyable pace and covers basic moves to improve core strength, balance and posture. Suitable for all, including complete beginners.

Learn dance fitness moves and enjoy a fun workout to help with cardiovascular fitness, muscular conditioning, flexibility, co-ordination and balance. Suitable for active older adults, beginners and those who prefer lower intensity Zumba®.

Make a small bread or fruit basket over two evening sessions. Suitable for beginners as an introduction to traditional willow basketry techniques, or for those with some experience wanting to refresh their skills.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 10 weeks, we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.