Connecting with other Londoners

I am a first generation immigrant my parents came from Europe, like many others seeking sanctuary from war. They had to change their surnames, adapt to many cultural and social attitudes not always welcoming or easy. They managed to make their lives here post naturalisation and prospered.
How did they manage? What help were they given beyond British Citizenship ? what incentive to cultural integration were they offered? i dont know. They paid their taxes and worked hard to make a good life for me and my sister.
Good schooling and education access to free medical health, freedom of speech and the right to liberty under the law. A home. A job.... It seems to me that throughout history humans have moved and settled driven by war persecution climate change etc if settlement acceptance integration and all the necessary contributors to a healthy cosmopolitan society are in place then social integration will happen.
Socially engineered strategies like this seem to offer a superficial view of integration. When people feel under threat for whatever reason history has shown us that societies dis integrate. Poverty crime poor housing mental and physical threats to wellbeing all impact on integration and community. People become paranoid envious greedy hostile to outsiders. The worst elements of human nature are unleashed.
The only social integration policies that will work are ones that address these fundemental problems.
Not wasted sticking plaster gestures like this.

Just by being a Londoner and living this wonderful city. Schools, tube, shopping areas, libraries, bars and restaurants, public events....You can't avoid mixing and enjoying the richness that gives you living in such a widely multicultural city. Just stop the absolute nonsense of Brexit. Brexit will destroy London!

With the new people moving into the luxury apartments making clear they do not want to connect with others on the community, it brings a disastrous change. Another way to connect with other in London is at various events; music, cinema, dance and theatre. But I do have to be wary as many make it clear that I am not welcome in that space..so I approach wih caution.

My local library was an important way of connecting on a community level until it closed. Even though its been reopened it looks like a storage space and not a community space. Other local venues for connecting have closed and become luxury apartments. Or opened up for people that do not live in the area who throw up around the space and leave empty bottlea and leaflet. So its bus stops, on buses and tubes. In supermarket and clothing shops. These are fleeting connections though.

Social dancing is one of the best ways to connect with people of different backgrounds in London. You can take classes in Partner dancing like Argentine tango, salsa, swing, ballroom, most classes accept solos and you rotate partners. Then you can go to a social dance and lead or follow any partner. Dance communities are open and welcoming. People of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds just enjoy their shared interest in dance and very rarely does anyone ask me what job I do or where I come from etc.

I don’t care about a persons colour, creed, sexuality or politics the only thing that matters is that we are on the same wavelength. You cannot like everyone. One thing that really annoys me is politicians or PC people pushing continually their point of view and expecting everyone to agree with them. I had homosexual friends before it was legalised but I am getting fed up with rainbow, which is light refracted through water, being shoved at me. Jobs should be given on ability, not because you are a women, black, Muslim, Chinese ad infinitum. Teach new and old immigrants about our way of life in England, how to cross the road, say please and thank you and offer seats to older people on the tube, which Eastern Europeans are really good at.