Make a charm, make a friend at our instax™ community events

Our instax™ community events are back for a second series this autumn, with three evenings across London, Manchester and Edinburgh. The first series sold out in every city, so if you fancy one, it's worth booking early.

Here's the shape of it. Two hours, a fabric keyring charm you sew yourself, an instax™ print station to pull photos off your phone, and a room of people you'd never otherwise have met. Come on your own or bring a friend, both work.

Fellow Humans are leading the nights for us again. We're bringing the printers, the film, and a few of our team to get you going.

Book your space now.

What these nights are

We run these evenings because instax™ is at its best in a room full of people. Prints get made, passed about and compared, and by the end of the night everyone has something in their hand that didn't exist at 7pm. That's the part we want our community to have, and it doesn't happen through a screen.

The first series ran earlier this year, and people stayed well past the end, swapped numbers and messaged afterwards asking when the next one was. So this time round there's more room, more printers, and a third city.

So the idea is straightforward. Give people a room and something to make, then let the making and the printing feed each other. You print from the night, you make something to keep the print with, and you go home with both.

Some of our team will be there too. You'll find them at the tables rather than behind a stand. They'll show you what the app does, help you get a shot you actually like, and sort you out if a print doesn't come out how you hoped.

What to expect on the night

Doors are at 7pm and you're out by 9pm. The room fills up slowly for the first fifteen minutes or so, then Fellow Humans get everyone going and it stops feeling like a room of strangers fairly quickly.

This time round you're making fabric charms. You'll cut your shapes, stuff them, and sew them into little keyrings you can clip onto a bag. It's more forgiving than it sounds, and nobody's expecting yours to come out neat.

Roughly how the two hours go:

•         Arrive, grab a drink, start chatting to whoever's nearest
•         Cut, stuff and sew your keyring charm
•         Print your photos from the night at the instax™ print station
•         Cookies, hot chocolate from Cocoa Canopy, and soft drinks from Dalston's
•         Get matched with the person you're most likely to click with
•         Head off with your charm, your prints, and a few new contacts

The charm and the prints are meant to end up together. Sew something you like, print the moment you made it in, and the two of them tell you more about the night than either would on its own. Some people clip the charm to a bag and stick the print in a frame. Others keep the pair in the same place and forget about them until they move house.

There's no running order to keep up with either. The sewing, the printing and the eating all happen at once, so you can drift between them at whatever pace suits you.

The matching is the part people mention afterwards. Fellow Humans use what they call relationship science to pair you up with the person in the room you're most likely to get on with, so you leave with an actual name.

Printing on the night

There's an instax™ print station set up in the room with our team next to it. You connect your phone through the app, pick your photo, and the print comes out a moment later.

Everyone gets up to ten prints across the evening, and the team will keep an eye on the queue so nobody's waiting long. That covers the charm you've made, the table you're sitting at, and a few of the people you've met. Worth having a think about what you want before you're at the front of the queue.

It prints whatever is on your phone, so take your photos across the evening and print them at the station before you go. Your charm halfway through, the table mid-mess, whoever's sitting opposite you. That's the stuff you'll want on the wall in a fortnight.

Come with your phone charged and you'll get the most out of the station. The printing runs off your phone, so a full battery means you can keep shooting right up to the last round of prints.

There's space along the bottom of every print if you want to add a name, a date or whoever you were sitting with.

Who these nights are for

Everyone, is the short answer. Some people book on their own and use it to meet people in a new city or a new part of town. Others book with a friend and treat it as a night out. Both are completely normal here, and the matching works either way.

It helps that nobody in the room knows what they're doing with the fabric either. Sewing is a great leveller in that sense, and the standard across the tables is generally somewhere between rough and cheerfully terrible.

There's no age bracket, no skill level to clear, and no assumption that you're arriving with a story about why you came. Turning up is the whole entry requirement.

What to bring

Yourself and a charged phone, and that's genuinely it. Fabric, stuffing, needles, thread, printers and film are all covered by us and Fellow Humans, so there's nothing to buy beforehand and nothing to carry in.

If you've got a bag you want the charm to live on, bring that too. It's easier to pick your shape and colours when you can see what it's going to hang next to.

Where and when

Three cities, three Thursdays, all running 7pm to 9pm:

• London, 24 September, at FUJIFILM House of Photography in Covent Garden
• Manchester, 1 October, at Essys on King Street
• Edinburgh, 8 October, venue confirmed nearer the date

London is at our own Covent Garden home, which means the whole instax™ range is downstairs if you want a proper look at anything. Manchester is at Essys, a short walk from Deansgate. Edinburgh's venue lands nearer the date and will be somewhere central, as it always is.

The exact address gets emailed to you once you've booked, so keep an eye on your inbox.

How to book

Tickets are £10 and you book through Fellow Humans. Every night in the first series sold out, so grab yours quickly if there's a city you want.

If you have any additional needs, email Fellow Humans before you book and they'll sort things out ahead of the night.

After the night

By the end of the evening you'll have used an instax™ printer properly, which is the easiest way to work out whether you want one. If you do, our photo printers page covers the range and the different print formats, so you can see which one suits how you'd actually use it.

Our store locator will point you to your nearest stockist if you'd rather buy in person, and the team at FUJIFILM House of Photography are always happy to talk you through the options.

Tickets are live now. We'll see you in London, Manchester or Edinburgh.