Link Age Southwark held a traditional Scottish ceilidh fundraiser at The Ivy House in Nunhead, with SELfolk providing the music. Proceeds from the event were intended to help fund the charity’s work to reduce and prevent loneliness among older people and people living with dementia.
The event, listed as LINK AID 4 – Cèilidh Fundraiser, took place on 23 October 2026. The venue was The Ivy House, 40 Stuart Road, Nunhead, London SE15 3BE, according to the charity’s event page.
The listing advertised doors at 19:00, with the live performance starting at 19:30. The advertised start of the music was therefore half an hour after the doors time, with both times given in the visible event listing.
The event information also contained a window of 18:00–21:00 UTC. On the October date, British Summer Time meant those hours corresponded to 19:00–22:00 locally. The start of that window therefore matched the listed doors time; the performance had its own, later advertised start at 19:30.
London Ceilidh Club founder Ed McCabe was among those commenting on ceilidhs, alongside attendees at the fundraiser, Link Age Southwark staff and SELfolk musicians.
Support for Southwark residents
The charity says it exists to reduce and prevent loneliness among older people and people living with dementia in Southwark. Those are the groups its work is intended to support, and that work was the stated destination for proceeds from the ceilidh.
The event page identified support for that work as the purpose of the proceeds. This distinguishes the fundraiser’s aim from any eventual result: the listing set out where the money was intended to go, rather than establishing a confirmed fundraising total or a measured outcome for the charity’s services.
SELfolk was named as the performing group on the charity’s listing. The ensemble’s own site identifies it as the SELfolk orchestra, led by Richard Jones, and lists public ceilidhs during 2026. Its Ivy House appearance combined that musical activity with fundraising for Link Age Southwark.
The orchestra’s public programme includes ceilidhs in 2026, placing the Nunhead engagement within its listed area of activity. At The Ivy House, the performance formed part of a fundraiser with an explicitly named charity and a stated purpose for its proceeds.
Ceilidhs on the London calendar
A separate ceilidh-related production began in London on the same date. Shoreditch Town Hall’s programme identifies CEILIDH as a new musical, which ran from 23 October to 13 November 2026. That was a theatre run at Shoreditch Town Hall, not the Nunhead charity event.
The two listings gave the events different schedules and formats. Link Age Southwark’s traditional Scottish ceilidh was advertised for a single evening, while the new musical’s London run extended into November. Their shared starting date placed both on the London calendar on 23 October.
Figures attributed to Eventbrite and its spokesperson also pointed to growth in ticket sales for ceilidh events. They put UK sales growth at 16% in 2024–25 and the global increase at 15% over the same period. These remain platform-supplied figures, rather than independently verified findings from an Eventbrite dataset.
The UK increase was one percentage point above the global figure. Both numbers concern ceilidh-event ticket sales; they are not measures of money raised for Link Age Southwark or of attendance at its Ivy House fundraiser. The event’s stated charitable purpose was support for the organisation’s work in Southwark.
