40 fantastic things to do in London this weekend

This weekend Clissold Park will be bursting with international street food and drink, Surrey Docks Farm will be hosting a day of wholesome family fun, and a Hawaiian-themed pop-up complete with tropical cocktails and summer time vibes is opening in Dalston. Have a beautiful few days with our suggestions below.

Things to do 

Old Spitalfields Night Market, Spitalfields Market, TONIGHT, free. Enjoy the atmosphere of one of East London's best markets for later on Fridays with Spitalfields' new night market. Every second Friday of the month, street food vendors and shops open until 9pm.

The Ugly Animal Roadshow, Royal Institution of Great Britain, TONIGHT, £14, £10 concs. The world is full of incredibly ugly animals and biologist, writer and science communicator Simon Watt wants to share the most monstrous of them all.

Late at the Library: The Hip Hop Shakespeare Company, British Library, TONIGHT, £15. An evening of modern day storytelling, music and poetry with the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company and their award winning artistic director, Akala.

Tweed Run, various London locations, Sat, £25. Grab your best cravat and dust off that harris tweed jacket for it's that time of year again! The Tweed Run has sold out, but tickets are still available for the closing ceremony.

Surrey Docks Farm Spring Fair, Rotherhithe, Sat, free. Sheep-shearing, baby farm animals, live music, home-made cakes, farm produce sales and donkey rides are all on the menu at Surrey Docks' city farm's spring fair this year.

London Burlesque Festival, Dingwalls (Lock 17), all weekend, £27. The tenth London Burlesque Festival features more than 100 artists showcasing all kinds of neo-burlesque performance, striptease and other sexy endeavours.

M.i.h Jeans Pop-up Concept Store, 7 Upper James Street, all weekend. In celebration of its tenth anniversary, British girls' denim brand M.i.h Jeans are popping up in Soho for the month of May. The store will feature a specially designed scent, a pretty floral installation and vintage furniture that was picked by the brand's founder Chloe Lonsdale.

…or check out more events happening in London this weekend.

 

Eating and drinking

Brooklyn Brewery's Beer Mansion, MC Motors, Fri-Sat, £10. Learn about beer barrels, IPA, and pairing food with beer from Brooklyn Brewery's own experts at New York transplant The Mash Tour. Out in the courtyard, Voodoo Ray's pizza truck will be selling snacks while live music plays.

Pop Upstairs, Eat 17, Fri-Sat. Chatsworth Road's Eat 17 has hooked up with pastry chef and chocolatier Fraise Sauvage for a series of weekend dinners throughout spring and summer.

Against The Grain, Canalside Bar, Sat-Sun, free. This two-day showcase of gluten-free grub returns for a third year in Camden Market's Middle Yard with traders such as Louisiana Chilli Shack, Feed Me Primal, Maize Blaze, Happy Crepe and LAB Pizza, Raw Gorilla and more taking part.

Clissold Park Food and Drink Festival, Clissold Park, Sat-Sun, free. This foodie fest returns to Stoke Newington for three days of British and international street food, craft beers and ales, children's activities and a busy live music stage.

RAW – The Artisan Wine Fair, Old Truman Brewery, Sun, £35-£55 adv. This artisan wine fair pours back into the capital for a fifth year running, proving that organic wine is not a short-lived trend.

Le Bun Vivant at Leicester House, Leicester House, all weekend. A five-week pop-up located in China Town from the Le Bun boys who specialise in French-American cuisine.

…or check out the latest restaurant reviews.

 

Comedy

Rob Delaney: Meat, Royal Festival Hall, TONIGHT, £20-£22. The 'Catastrophe' star brings his brutal stand-up to the South Bank.

Trygve Wakenshaw – Nautilus, Southbank Centre, Sat, £15.50 & £20.50, concs £14. Trygve Wakenshaw's 'Nautilus' is a ridiculously funny, hugely inventive 75-minutes of clowning and mime, with a subtle vegan message behind his propless (and largely wordless) skits.

Sarah Millican – Outsider, Eventim Apollo Hammersmith, all weekend, £25. Seemingly sweet and properly filthy comic Sarah Millican is back on the road, with 'Outsider', which she's bringing to the Hammersmith Apollo.

…or check out all the critics’ choice comedy shows.

 

Live music

Kaytranada, Troxy, TONIGHT, £24.75. Producer Louis Celestin crafts hypnotic, spacey R&B beats.

Ghostface Killah, Southbank Centre, Sat,£20-£30. Ghostface Killah is a rapper who needs no introduction… apart from the one Ol’ Dirty Bastard gave him on Wu-Tang Clan track ‘Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.

Peckham Rye Music Festival, various venues, Sat, £18-£35. The first line-up for this new festival in Peckham includes Radio 1 DJ Benji B, top producer Leif and Kassem Mosse collaborating live with Mix Mup.

Patrick Wolf, Islington Assembly Hall, Sun, £18.50. Eccentric, classically-trained London minstrel Patrick Wolf mixes bohemian folk songwriting with laptop sounds and some pretty disturbing lyrics.

…or take a look at all the live music events in London this weekend.

 

Nightlife

Palm Club, 14 Bradbury St, Fri-Sat, free. Get your pau hana on at this Hawaiian-themed pop-up in Dalston, serving up Kona beer, tropical cocktails and ‘tiki vibes’ (whatever that means, dude) for eight weekends this summer.

Savage, Metropolis, Sat, £5. Those restless polysexual party animals Sink The Pink are at it again. Their latest venture is a weekly disco bash at strip club-cum-club space Metropolis, where you can roam around three floors of filthy fun for only a fiver.

Party People, Mick's Garage, Sun, free. A free daytime party in Hackney Wick happening every Sunday, all summer long.

Eyes Down! Bingo with Ida Barr, London Wonderground, Sun, £12.50-£17.50, concs £11. The hip-op hip-hop star, the missing link between music hall and dancehall, the 'people's pensioner' presents her bingo show.

…or see all the parties planned this weekend.

 

Film

The Final Girls Film Club: ‘Trouble Every Day’, Prince Charles Cinema, TONIGHT, £7.50. New feminist horror film club, you say? We’re there. The Final Girls screen horror movies with a female director or feminist outlook. 

Scared to Dance Film Night: ‘Mistaken For Strangers’, Genesis Cinema, TONIGHT, £9.50. Comedian Josie Long will present the ultra-hip Scared to Dance club collective’s first film event, a screening of recent music doc ‘Mistaken For Strangers’, about US indie stars The National.

‘Top Gun’ ’80s party, Geffrye Museum, Sat, £16.50. Join Time Out for a trip back to the 1980s, and a screening of one of that decade’s most beloved films.

Or at the cinema...

Everybody Wants Some ★★★★★ 'Everybody Wants Some!!' is about nothing more (or less) than the weekend shenanigans that transpire on a Texas college campus in August 1980. 

Mustang ★★★★☆ In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

Our Kind of Traitor ★★★★☆ More smart sleuthing in exotic locations from the master of the spy thriller, John Le Carre.

…or see all of the latest releases.

 

Theatre

After Independence, Arcola Theatre, Fri-Sat, £17, £14 concs. A pair of white Zimbabwean farmers are shocked when a man from the government arrives with a purchase order in this new drama.

The Iphigenia Quartet, Gate Theatre, Sat, £10. The bleak Greek myth of Iphigenia, looked at from four different angles.

The Local Stigmatic, Old Red Lion, all weekend, £10-£14. Heathcote William's darkly sinister play is revived to mark its 50th anniversary.

…or see our theatre critics’ choices.

This week's best new art 

Matisse: Drawing With Scissors, London Print Studio, Fri-Sat, free. A small slice of Mediterranean summer comes to Westbourne Park with this show of 35 prints by Henri Matisse.  

Painting with Light, Tate Britain, all weekend, £14.50-£18. The Tate focuses on its stellar collection of Pre-Raphaelite art (again!) with a show that brings out the big guns of the movement, such as John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 

George Shaw: My Back To Nature, National Gallery, all weekend, free. For the past two and half years, George Shaw has enjoyed one of the best gigs in art as artist-in-residence at the National Gallery. This is our opportunity to see how the artist, a Coventry lad who studied at the RCA in the 1990s, has been inspired by the collection. 

Catlin Art Prize, Londonewcastle Project Space, all weekend, free. This annual exhibition showcases the most exciting and dynamic graduate and postgraduate artists working today.

…or see all London art reviews.

And finally

Win... one of ten pairs of tickets to Swan Lake in-the-round by English National Ballet or one of five pairs of tickets to Wilderness festival

Grab... a box of six artisan doughnuts from doughnuts and save 38%

Book… these gigs while you still can

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