🐘 14 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (24–26 May)

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Hey DILFs! 

Last week I asked: “What’s the most stressful part of leaving the house with children?” The clear winner (with 41.5% of all votes cast) was: “Dealing with complaints about not wanting to go out.” Second place (28.3%) went to “Getting them to focus long enough to put their socks and shoes on.”

As someone who recently had to explain that no, we are not “already doing something” just because you’re lying on the floor, and yes, socks are still required even if your shoes are “cosy inside”, I feel fully represented.

I have no tips, other than bribery and strategic lying – but if anything can tempt them out the front door this weekend, it’s probably somewhere below. There’s loads on, it’s a long weekend, and you’ve earned a win.

Enjoy! 

Jeff xx

1: Lose yourself in a multi-sensory soundstorm

Feel the Sound: An exhibition experience on a different frequency
Saturday, Sunday and Monday, slots from 10:00 (and other dates until 31 August)
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Adults £20, under-14s £8, under-5s free

Remember when art exhibitions were essentially a batch of paintings crammed onto walls, and we’d look at them and decide if we liked them? Remember when art exhibitions came off the walls and became urinals and unmade beds, and we’d look at them and think “Huh?” 

The art world has moved on again: it’s all about immersive, experiential, multi-sensory stuff instead – which is no bad thing, I guess. Unless you’re hoping to make it big as a painter of wistful women in dinghies, in which case you’re screwed for now. 

The Barbican is the latest venue to jump on the proprioceptive bandwagon. And mark my words: “proprioceptive” will be OED’s Word of the Year for 2025. (In 2024 it was “brain rot”, so we'd be looking at quite the tonal pivot.)

But back to the Barbican. Its new Frequencies season is all about interrogating “how we perceive and encounter sound” – with club nights, live sets, workshops and more. At the heart of it all is Feel the Sound, a full-venue exhibition that promises to “rearrange what you think sound is”. It includes various multi-sensory installations that span the length and breadth of the venue – from the car parks to the Lakeside Terrace. 

You’ll “dance to beats from car sound-systems”, “join an ever-expanding choral experience”, “discover your inner symphony” and “feel music without any sound”. It’s all a bit vague at the moment, but they’ve hyped it up so much that I’m convinced it’ll be incredible. 

And, because it’s the Barbican, you’ll get a multi-sensory bonus: the navigational disorientation of trying to find your way out. It’s an extra gift for anyone looking to engage their sense of panic.

Find out more: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/feel-the-sound 

2: Recreate movie magic with everyday stuff

Popcorn!
Saturday and Sunday, 11:00–18:00 (and other days Tuesday–Sunday until 21 September)
Whitechapel Gallery, 77–82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX
FREE

I’ll admit it’s starting to look like I’m just phoning it in with my exhibition picks. All I have to do is scroll through the listings, spot the word “immersive”, then whack in a few reliable terms like “perception”, “experiential” and “surprisingly educational”, and I’ve done my job. But I swear I don’t pick things because they’re easy to write about: I pick them because they sound genuinely good. 

The second interactive exhibition of the weekend is also sound-based. Created by artist Jenny Pengilly, Popcorn! at Whitechapel Gallery allows us to explore how film sound effects are made – using our voices, bodies and various objects to recreate the glorious crunch-snap-squelch world of Foley artistry. The idea is to let us experiment with sound the way professional sound designers do – and, if we’re honest, to give our kids a socially sanctioned opportunity to make too much noise with props.

The exhibition centres on a DIY sound studio where we can record Foley effects to accompany an improvised film – snapping celery for bones, rustling bubble wrap for popcorn, and flapping leather gloves for wings. Around the space, there are props to handle, image boards to spark ideas, and soundtracks to experiment with. It’s all very child-friendly, and I’ve already calendarised a visit for my boys and me. 

Find out more: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/popcorn/ 

3: Join a kid-friendly cultural coup

Family Takeover Day
Sunday 25 May, 10:00–14:00
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, The Regent's Park, Inner Circle, NW1 4NU
Adults £18, under-18s £15

Useful discovery: call something a “Takeover” and suddenly it sounds popular and very very cool. Compare “Local Bands Showcase” with “Indie Takeover”, for example. One gives the impression of a half-empty pub and a guitarist with a broken amp; the other is a scene – with a queue out the door and wristband access. 

For a real-life example, there’s Family Takeover Day at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Essentially a bunch of children’s activities smushed into half a day in one place, it benefits from a surprisingly persuasive name that makes it feel like the unmissable event of the summer. 

That’s not to say it’s all branding and no substance, because it’s definitely worth going. It’s in a fabulous location, with activities that (for once) suit a variety of age groups – which is both a logistical miracle and amazing news if you have more than one child.

Events include: 

👍️ Back to Baby Family Concert: Flute Fantasia (all ages). A family-friendly concert featuring classical favourites, played by outstanding musicians. 

👍️ Comedy Club 4 Kids (6+). Proper comedy for kids – not in the sense of “someone falling off a chair”, but actual comedians doing proper sets, minus the filth.

👍️ Fly-Kid (all ages). It’s a family rave with actual music. Out: The Wheels on the Bus, In: Ride wit Me. Expect to hear the best 90s and 00s R&B, hip hop and pop, and enjoy some street dance lessons, hip hop props, dress-up, games and face painting. 

👍️ Fold Your CIty (3+). “Create a large origami model city” in an activity that’s presumably trying not to over-promise for fear of under-delivering. I’m sure it’ll be brilliant. 

👍️ Play Build Play (under-5s, but all ages welcome). Become an architect, designer and builder using an extremely generous pile of recycled and repurposed materials.

Find out more: https://openairtheatre.com/production/family-takeover-day 

4: Drive a Mars Rover and dodge existential dread

Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?
Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 10:00–16:30 (and daily until 22 February)
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD
Adults £16.50, 4–16s £8.25, under-4s free

Thanks to a bad childhood experience of watching Men in Black, I’d be MORE than happy to remain ignorant about the possibility of extraterrestrial life – and I’d really rather scientists wait until I’m gone before they do any more delving. 

I’m talking a maximum of 50 years, tops, to suspend all research in order to not freak me the eff out – but those annoyingly impatient astrobiologists just will not let it go. So here we are, with a huge exhibition at the Natural History Museum of all places, to discover how we could detect if life indeed exists “out there” (shudder). 

I haven’t been because see above, so my attempt to summarise it below is based on an amalgamation of various media reviews – which all seem to be completely in favour of both the concept and execution of this nightmare disguised as thrilling space exploration. 

So. The exhibition starts on Earth, explaining how a cocktail of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and water (delivered by asteroids) helped kick things off. Some of those asteroids are 4.6 billion years old – and fragments of them are physically present (and touchable) in the gallery. I’ll admit that’s pretty cool. 

Then it’s onto the Mars gallery, where there’s a giant interactive panorama of the Red Planet that you can touch to reveal how it looked billions of years ago – back when it had water. There’s also a game where you can control a Mars Rover and try to collect useful rock samples. 

Later comes my biggest bete noire: an examination into what other planets might be out there, whether they’re capable of supporting life, and how we might be able to detect an alien civilisation. Then there’s a room of apparently very realistic CGI animations of imaginary alien lifeforms. This one sounds like something they created after realising kids would be disappointed without it, but it’s all COMPLETELY MADE UP, NOT AT ALL REAL, AND JUST FOR FUN. 

So yes – by all accounts, it’s fascinating, important, beautifully designed, and completely incompatible with my nervous system. Enjoy! 

Find out more: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/space.html 

5: Load up on antihistamines and see lots and lots of lovely flowers

RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Saturday, 08:00–17:30 (although the “sell off” begins at 16:00 – see below)
London Gate, Royal Hospital Road, Royal Hospital Chelsea, SW3 4SR
Don’t ask about the price

Belgravia in Bloom
Until Monday 26 May
Location information
FREE

Chelsea in Bloom
Until Sunday 25 May
Map/location information
FREE

Spring has sprung, which means it's time to stop casually enjoying flowers in parks and start appreciating those brightly coloured sneeze funnels in a more structured, sometimes more expensive way. 

For example: the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. If you want to go this Saturday, it’ll cost you a literal eye-watering £111.85 PER PERSON, and I’m not even going to describe it because if you were that into flowers, you’d have RHS membership already (which would entitle you to free haha silly me tickets that cost merely £90.85 per person). 

If you want to go but not that much, there’s a way to enjoy some of the experience for free. According to Ian Visits, a ceremonial bell is rung at 16:00 on Saturday to denote the end of the show for 2025 – at which point all the plants are sold off to any ticket-holders who want them. And “... the parade of people carrying plants home is almost a tourist attraction all of its own. It’s quite a sight.” You can see some of his pictures here. It does look jolly fun. 

Two other free alternatives are Belgravia in Bloom and Chelsea in Bloom. Their annual flower displays are about as far removed from “natural” as you can get, but they’re free – and there are maps on their respective websites to help you navigate your way to all of them. 

Or you could just go to your local park, like in the past. The flowers are nice there too – even if they haven’t been arranged into a freakish Cheshire Cat. 

6–14: More more more! 

There’s a terrifying number of events this weekend; here are a few more: 

Family Day: Purrfect Prints 
Saturday 24 May, 13:00–16:00
William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, E17 4PP
FREE
Age guidance: 5+

Bank Holiday Party + Connect 4 World Record Attempt
Sunday 25 May, 12:00 onwards
Big Penny Social, 1 Priestley Way, E17 6AL
FREE

Family Bounce House
Monday 26 May (and every day until 30 May), various time slots
Big Penny Social, 1 Priestley Way, E17 6AL
£7 per person
Age guidance: suitable for all

Family Film Club: Fashion in Film Festival: Shorts - Nature's Resources (U*)
Saturday 24 May, 11:00
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
£5 per person

Family studio: experiments in ink
Sunday 25 May, 11:00–13:00 and 14:00–16:00
Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

Make it: Painting
Saturday 24 May, 10:30, 13:00 and 15:00
V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL
£20 per person
Age guidance: 5+

3EIB Fashion Pop-up: SWAG from SWANA
Saturday and Sunday, 12:00–18:00
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
FREE

Morning Stars: relaxed planetarium show (advanced show)
Monday 26 May, 10:15–11:00
Royal Observatory, Blackheath Avenue, SE10 8XJ
Adults £10, children £5
Age guidance: strictly 5+

The Vintage Furniture & Flea Market
Sunday 25 May, 12:00–17:00
Leadenhall Market, Gracechurch Street, EC3V 1LT
FREE