Fulham & Chelsea WI

Welcome to Fulham & Chelsea WI.

We were the first London WI, established on 6 October 2003 by a group of women who felt that community spirit should be given a chance to flourish wherever people live and to offer local women the chance to make friends, learn new (and consolidate old) skills, while benefiting the surrounding community and feeling part of it too. FCWI has since gone from strength to strength – we celebrated our 20th birthday in 2023 – and there are now over 50 London WI’s. The Women’s Institute is now the largest voluntary women’s organisation in the UK with almost 220,000 members in about 6,300 WIs.

We managed to keep our meetings, events and book club going virtually on Zoom through the pandemic, but we were delighted to be welcomed back to our usual venue from September 2021. 

We meet for a couple of hours at 7.30pm on the first Monday of each month (or the second Monday if it is a bank holiday) at The Hollywood Arms (upstairs in The Boulevard Bar) 45 Hollywood Road, London SW10 9HX. Hollywood Road is directly opposite the entrance to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

We usually have a speaker talk to us about current events and topical issues or inspires us with their achievements and adventures.  Once or twice a year we will run craft activities at meetings, rather than host a speaker, and these have included making Christmas decorations and lavender bags, crochet and learning origami.

As well as our main monthly meetings, we have a Book Club, and arrange ad hoc outings to the theatre and cinema, as well as getting together to visit art galleries and exhibitions.

Don’t worry about coming on your own, most of our members do. Grab a drink from the bar downstairs and come on up to The Boulevard Bar. See you there!