Penny Lectures
At Morley’s Penny Lectures, leading artists, performers, makers, producers and writers share their work, stories and ideas.
The lectures are free for all to attend and are held in Morley’s iconic spaces: the Holst Room, The Emma Cons Hall and Morley Gallery.
The Lectures date all the way back to 1882, when Morley’s co-founder, Emma Cons, started organising talks at Old Vic Theatre in London’s Waterloo.
Highlights from the 2024 Penny Lectures include:
Artist and Educator Kate Wilson on Being Inspired By the Restless City. .
Neville Brody – Graphic Design Pioneer
Phillipa Tudor – Holst at 150: re-assessing his achievement – Morley College London
Eileen Perrier – Photography Looking Back to Move Forward – My Practice 1995 to Present
James Mac on the art of makeup and his own story, as a queer, Irish person living with Tourette’s Syndrome.
Be first to find out about our upcoming 2025 Penny Lectures series! Sign up to our Newsletter here and follow our events page.
The Penny Lectures story – the lecture series which became Morley College
When Morley’s co-founder Emma Cons started organising lectures at the Old Vic Theatre in London’s Waterloo, her mission was to make the latest science accessible to working people.
The first lecture was titled “The Telephone, or How to Talk to a Man a Hundred Miles Away,” by William Lant Carpenter.
Topics were chosen to inspire new thinking and ideas. As the talks grew in popularity, they became known as the Penny Lectures – priced at threepence for the balcony, tuppence for the pit and a penny for the gallery.
Their great success led to the development of evening classes and eventually the establishment of the “Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women” based at the Old Vic.
In 1924 Morley College moved from the Old Vic to its current site at 61 Westminster Bridge Road – half a mile from the Old Vic. The lectures were hugely popular and were expanded to cover visual arts, humanities and performance. The lectures continued attracting eminent speakers as Alfred Cort Haddon, the founder of modern anthropology, Sir John Wolfe-Barry, engineer of the Tower Bridge and chemist Herbert McLeod. The Penny Lectures continued sporadically into the early 1960s.
When the college celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2015, the Penny Lectures were revived for a new generation of adults to enjoy and be inspired by the lectures.
Leading Thinkers and Artists
The speakers giving Penny Lectures include notable artists and thinkers of the 20th Century and more recent times:
- Philosophy: Mary Warnock, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Anscombe, Shami Chakrabarti
- Literature: Edith Sitwell, L P Hartley, Angus Wilson, H G Wells, Vita Sackville West, Alistair Cooke, Walter De La Mare
- Economics: Harold Laski
- Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Michael Tippett, Rob Cowan, Oliver Soden
- Visual Arts: Eric Gill, Ernst Gombrich, James Mac, Eileen, Sokari Douglas Camp
- Dance: Rudolf Laban, Antony Tudor, Dame Darcey Bussell
- Politics: Ellen Wilkinson, Harold Nicolson
- Science and Geology: Prof. Roger Kneebone, Dr Javier Cuadros, Elizabeth West of De Beers
- Performing Arts: Dr Jonathan Miller, Sam Blenkin
- History: Prof. Jerry White, Alan Wakefield, Marc Morris
- Design: Grant Gibson, Neville Brody
- Fashion: Lynda and Daniel Kinne, Sara Arnold
- Health and Wellbeing: Jaime Thurston, Gill Hasson, Anja Steinbauer, Dolly Sen
- Sustainability: Kristina Roszynski, Carol Costello, Bridget Mckenzie
In keeping with Emma Con’s vision of making adult education accessible to all, entry to the lectures is free. This reflects our ongoing mission to provide excellent, distinctive and inspiring adult education for all.
If you are interested in suggesting someone to host a Penny Lecture, please email events@morleycollege.ac.uk.
Featured Lectures
Gustav Holst’s best friend and fellow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams described him as “a great composer, a great teacher, and a great friend”. This shone through Holst’s time as Director of Music at Morley from 1907-1924.
This talk will reassess Holst’s achievement throughout his career, and his lasting legacy.
Kristina Roszynski and Carol Costello, partners at Cullinan Studio, will discuss recent projects including Marlborough Sports Garden with a focus on the World Earth Day theme of Planet vs Plastics and our collaboration with London South Bank University on energy projects research.
Eli Anderson dives into the feature of our Western society, that older people, are disproportionately affected by mental health, isolation, ill health, lack of support, and access to resources that may improve their lives.
