🐺 17 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (17–18 January)

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Hey DILFs!

If you’ve indoctrinated your children into the fantasticness of David Bowie, then you all might be interested in David Bowie in Time: A Day at The British Library this Saturday. It’s to mark a decade since his death, and features “a landmark gathering of musicians, writers, filmmakers, artists and critics”. There’ll be on-stage conversations and presentations throughout the day, and the programme of events really does sound brilliant.

In-person tickets have nearly sold out – so hurry if you want to attend. Alternatively, you can watch the entire event live online (and for up to two weeks after) for much cheaper than going in person. All the information you need is here.

Not interested in learning more about Britain’s longest-running identity crisis? Don’t worry: there’s plenty more for you below.

Enjoy!

Jeff xx

1: Discover classical music’s sneakiest educational trick

FUNharmonics: Peter and the Wolf
Saturday 17 January, 12:00
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£12–£22
Age guidance: 6+

DILF Club members were told about this event aaaages ago – before it was down to the final few tickets! Want to become a member? It’s just £3 a month and full of goodies. Find out more here.

Sometimes I feel like the Soviet Union gets a bit of bad PR. Yes, gulags, famines, mass murder and repression, but just think of the ballet! The infrastructure! The literacy rates! A bit like asbestos, really: catastrophically lethal, yes, but bloody marvellous for insulation.

One of the many genuinely excellent Soviet achievements is Peter and the Wolf. It was written in 1936 by Sergei Prokofiev, who’d been asked by the Central Children’s Theatre of Moscow (which sounds ominous, but was essentially set up to make ambitious theatre and music for kids) to create something for children that would introduce them to orchestral music.

Described as a “symphonic fairy tale for children”, it’s performed with a narrator speaking over live music, who explains how Peter lives with his anxious, overprotective grandfather near a meadow and a forest. After Peter ignores his grandfather’s warnings, he’s shut indoors to make sure he’s protected from the wild beasts outside. Then a wolf appears in the meadow, which – annoyingly for Peter – justifies his grandfather’s fears. It also results in a duck being eaten whole. So, on balance, worse for the duck.

Rather than panicking, Peter comes up with a plan and manages to trap the wolf with help from a bird. When hunters arrive and want to shoot it, Peter insists the wolf be captured and taken to the zoo instead.

Even cleverer than Peter’s ingenuity is how the story works musically. Each character is represented by a different instrument: Peter is the strings, the bird is a flute, the duck an oboe, the grandfather a bassoon, the wolf a trio of French horns, and the hunters are announced by timpani and bass drum. There’s also a cat somewhere in the story, who’s represented by a clarinet. As the story unfolds, children learn to recognise instruments by sound, without anyone stopping to explain it to them. It’s jolly impressive and surprisingly effective.

All of which is to say: if you’re hoping your children will grow up musically literate and theoretically suitable for placement in a Soviet-era orchestra, this is probably the correct first step.

Find out more: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/funharmonics-peter-and-the-wolf

While you’re there…

👍️ Winter Light is a free outdoor display of installations at the Southbank Centre, which uses light and colour to create a magical atmosphere (especially after dark). The venue’s website really underplays how good it looks, so here are some photos from a couple of years ago.

👍️ REPLAY: A Limitless Recycled Playground is back! See my write-up below.

2: Watch a space adventure turn into a recycling lesson

Zoom!
Sunday 18 January, 11:00 and 14:00
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£13.75 per person
Age guidance: 3–8

I have to admit: I saw the trailer for this show and cringed so hard that I nearly dislocated something trying to look away. Everyone appears permanently amazed – communicating their wonder through a lot of eyebrow action and with smiles that suggest they’re being paid by the tooth. They’re working extremely hard to show us how magical this is, and it all feels very non-British and awkward for me to witness.

But I’m recommending it anyway, because not everyone is as sensitive to overt displays of awe as me. And because, beneath all the facial enthusiasm, it’s a fairly solid bit of storytelling with a message that parents will probably approve of.

The story centres on space-obsessed Molly, who dreams of becoming an astronaut. When an alien called Leelo crash-lands in her back garden, Molly gets the space adventure she’s been hoping for… only to discover that fixing a spaceship turns out to involve rather a lot of time spent looking through wheelie bins.

The underlying message is that while Molly knows plenty about stars and planets, she still has a fair bit to learn about her own world. Namely, how much useful stuff we throw away and how reusing it might actually be a good idea. It’s one of those stories that dresses itself up as a space adventure and then uses aliens as a delivery system for an earnest recycling lesson.

The song in the trailer is super gentle and lovely – and also very different from the usual high-octane sensory assault we’ve come to expect from children’s shows. And while it doesn’t look like my kind of show, children are famously less bothered by cringe than I am.

Find out more: https://www.artsdepot.co.uk/event/zoom/

3: Let kids build entire worlds out of theatre leftovers

REPLAY: A Limitless Recycled Playground
Saturday and Sunday, various slots throughout the day (and daily until 12 April)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£7.50 per person
Age guidance: different sessions for 6 months–3 years and 4–11 years (younger children can join older siblings in the older session if necessary)

Now in its third year at Southbank Centre, I feel like REPLAY is reaching “Cadbury Creme Egg” status in how hotly anticipated it now is each season. It disappears for months at a time and everyone gets on with their lives, then it reemerges and we all go nuts with excitement. Admittedly, that’s where the Creme Egg analogy ends – because (unlike the increasingly disappointing chocolate) there’s never been a noticeable dip in quality or quantity for the price of a REPLAY visit.

If you’re a parent and you’ve never heard of it, you’re basically the equivalent of a teacher who hasn’t heard of the “six seven” trend. You’re a statistical impossibility, and I'm not sure I believe you.

But on the off-chance you’ve somehow missed it… REPLAY is like an indoor adventure playground, with everything made entirely out of rescued waste materials (tubes, foam, wooden things, strips of material, etc. salvaged from the rubbish bins of theatres, exhibitions and factories) that have been repurposed for open-ended and imaginative play.

The idea is for parents and children to play together, using all the materials available however they want, while “a score composed from recycled sounds” (me neither – and I Googled it and everything) provides a gently immersive atmosphere.

Everything can be moved, changed, combined, climbed over, slid down, worn and pretty much reimagined as anything they like for the duration of the session, and then there’s a one-minute countdown timer at the end for everyone to dismantle it all and put items back where they found them, ready for the next session to begin. Although I should be – and am – impressed by the entire session, it’s the tidy-up that always fills me with awe. Literally every single child rushes around like a lunatic to put items back in their rightful place, without once moaning that “it wasn’t ME who moved it, you know” or “but I’m huuuuuungry”.

Here’s a video from someone’s Insta, showing what it’s about. It’s suitable for ages six months to 11 years, and there are different session timings depending on the age(s) of your kid(s).

Tickets go fast, so book sooner rather than later.

Find out more: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/replay-a-limitless-recycled-playground

While you’re there…

👍️ Peter and The Wolf is on. Ditto Winter Light. See my write-ups above!

4: Decide for yourself whether muddy trousers count as art

Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–18:00 (and Tuesday–Sunday until 25 January)
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Adults £10, under-16s free
Age guidance: see below!

I’ve been umming and aahing over recommending this exhibition since it opened last September. Not because it’s bad, but because it deals with ideas that are surprisingly fiddly to explain to children. And unlike other exhibitions, you can’t just let them drift around enjoying a few pretty pictures or a nice bit of pottery while they daydream about meeting a Care Bear one day. Most of the clothes look like they’ve had a fairly traumatic past, and there will be questions.

Also, there’s one room that’s quite gross. We’ll come back to that.

So why am I recommending it now? Because I’ve been reading rave review after rave review for months, and I’ve realised I may have been overthinking it on your behalf. You’re perfectly capable of deciding whether your kids will find it intriguing, baffling, hilarious, or all three.

So. What’s it about?

For the past 50 years or so, parts of the fashion world have pushed back against the idea that fashion should always be about newness, cleanliness, polish and perfection. Instead, some designers have gone the other way, making clothes that look muddy, torn, stained, sweaty, burned or generally past their best. They’re not doing this just to be awkward (although surely that’s part of it): they’re using dirt as a way of talking about things that fashion normally tidies away or pretends aren’t there at all.

The exhibition boils this down into three main types of dirt.

First, dirt from the environment. Literal mud and earth. Clothes that have been buried underground, soaked in bogs, left out in the elements, or simply allowed to stain and fall apart over time. The idea behind this one is simple enough: decay is normal, materials age, and fashion’s obsession with everything looking brand new forever is a bit strange when you stop and think about it.

Second, dirt from the body. As in bodily fluids. As in sweat, blood, urine, breast milk, and other substances that will absolutely get me spam filtered if I spell them all out. Fashion usually works very hard to pretend bodies don’t do any of this, so this part of the exhibition does the opposite. You’ll see sweat turned into something sparkly, clothes marked by leaks and smears, and a very famous pair of urine-stained jeans. It’s intended to make you wonder why the basic realities of having a body are treated as embarrassing in the first place.

And finally, dirt (and decay) that’s been added on purpose. We’re encouraged to look at the torn fabrics, fake mud, engineered stains and distressed denim on display - things people buy all the time without thinking too hard about them – and ask why. Why do we like clothes that look lived in, but feel uncomfortable with the idea that they’ve actually been lived in by someone else? And what does it mean when that “authentic” look comes with a luxury price tag, like Balenciaga’s trainers that cost about £1,400 and arrive already looking knackered?

Put together, it’s an exhibition that keeps poking at our ideas of what clothes are meant to look like – and reminding us that clothes are worn by people, dragged through time, and usually end up a bit scuffed along the way.

Which brings us back to whether it works for kids. It’s not a children’s exhibition, and it does ask a bit more of them than most museums or galleries. But for older kids who are curious, fairly unshockable, or already asking awkward questions about how things are made and why we pretend certain stuff doesn’t exist, it can be more engaging than you might expect. You may want to breeze through the bodily fluids room rather than linger. Or not. Your call.

Find out more: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/dirty-looks

While you’re there…

👍️ The Barbican Centre is marking the final week of Dirty Looks with a full-blown Make & Craft family day, which is probably the clearest signal possible that the exhibition isn’t considered wildly unsuitable for children after all. If they’re actively encouraging families to come along and make things in response to it, I may have been slightly too sensitive on your behalf.

The day focuses on hands-on making with fabric, fashion and found materials, led by artists from the exhibition itself. There’ll be opportunities to repurpose old clothes, turn everyday objects into wearable sculptures, experiment with bioplastics made from kitchen ingredients, and generally rethink how things are made and worn. It’s aimed at ages 7+ (with adults in tow), runs as a mix of drop-in and bookable sessions, and feels like a practical, low-pressure way to engage with the ideas behind Dirty Looks without having to stare at any urine-stained jeans for too long.

👍️ On Saturday, the Barbican’s Family Film Club is showing Wolfwalkers (PG). Set in a remote town in 17th-century Ireland, the film follows a hunter and his daughter, Robyn, who arrive to deal with what the locals believe is a serious wolf problem. While her dad is busy hunting, Robyn finds herself bored, sidelined, and increasingly unconvinced by the town’s fear of the woods, before stumbling across the fact that the so-called wolfwalker legends may not be made up after all. It’s pitched as a story about friendship, loyalty and questioning the rules you’ve inherited, told through hand-drawn animation that looks a bit different from the usual glossy kids’ fare.

5: Craft something geometric, colourful and surprisingly chic

Family Day: Bauhaus Lanterns
Saturday 17 January, 13:00–16:00 (drop-in event)
William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, E17 4PP
Free (no gallery entry fee either)
Age guidance: 4+

Remember that pack of 100 tealights you picked up for £4 at the IKEA checkout? The one you’ve hauled from flat to flat for years, refusing on principle to chuck out? Good news: I’ve finally found something you can use them for!

At the William Morris Gallery this Saturday, you and those disrespectful children of yours – the ones who teased you endlessly for falling into a classic impulse-purchase trap – can all reach the rare agreement that you were right and they were wrong. Because you’ll be making a colourful, glowing tealight lantern based on Collier Campbell’s iconic Bauhaus designs. And that lantern will, duh, require a steady supply of tealights.

Collier Campbell was the textile design studio founded by sisters Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell in the 1960s, best known for hand-painted geometric patterns and bold colours. Their designs popped up everywhere from Liberty and Habitat to Jaeger and Conran, and in 1971 they caught the attention of Yves Saint Laurent, who used their designs as the inspiration for his first-ever ready-to-wear collection.

Those same designs now live in several museum collections and, soon, your own home. Using recycled plastic cups and coloured tissue paper, you’ll create your own lantern in the Collier Campbell style, perfect for adding a bit of cheer to these depressingly dark evenings.

One important note: if you’re already picturing a small domestic fire once the tissue paper meets the flame, you can relax. The tealights (provided by the museum) are battery-operated, so everything is entirely safe. Which also means, unfortunately, that your 100-pack from IKEA will continue to sit in the “random shit” drawer, pissing off the ketchup packets, unlabelled keys and broken Kinder Egg toy for taking up far too much space.

Find out more: https://www.wmgallery.org.uk/event/family-day-bauhaus-lanterns/

Other listings

This section now brings together both new events I don’t have room to expand on and selected older ones from past newsletters that are still running. If you see a “(see my write-up here)”, that’s your cue to click through and rediscover whatever Past Me felt strongly enough to write about.

toooB
Saturday 17 January, 11:00, 12:30 and 14:30
Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, 43 White Horse Road, London E1 0ND
£9 per person
Age guidance: 6–24 months

Family Workshop: Penguin Party
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 and 12:00
Little Angel Studios, Sebbon Street, N1 2EH
£10 per person
Age guidance: 3–6

Squirrel
Saturday and Sunday, 10:30, 12:30 and 14:30 (plus other days until 22 February)
Unicorn Theatre, 147 Tooley Street, SE1 2HZ
Adult + child £25, extra child £12.50
Age guidance: 6 months–4 years

Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (see my write-up here)
Saturday 17 January, 14:00 and 16:00
The Well Walk Theatre, 49 Willow Road, NW3 1TS
£12.72 per person
Age guidance: 6+

Walthamstow Curling Lounge (see my write-up here)
Saturday and Sunday, 12:00–18:00 (and Thursday–Sunday throughout the season)
Big Penny Social, 1 Priestley Way, E17 6AL
Adults £10, children £7 (per hour)
Age guidance: 5+ (note: you can book evening slots too, but children are only allowed in the venue until 18:00)

Superhero City Adventure for Kids in Kensington Gardens (see my write-up here)
Available all days and times (it’s self-guided) throughout the season
£6 per group
Europe sculpture, Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, SW7 2ET
Age guidance: 4–8

Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2025
Until 8 February, 10:30–18:00 (until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Adults £9.50, 12–18s £4.75, under-12s free

Harland Miller at the Design Museum (see my write-up here)
Until 25 January (Friday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00; Monday–Thursday 10:00–17:00)
Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG
FREE

Grinchmas Afternoon Tea Sightseeing Bus Tour (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 January, various time slots
Departs from Victoria Coach Station, 164 Buckingham Palace Road, SW1W 9TP
Adults £52, children £47
Age guidance: 5+

Me (see my write-up here)
Until 25 January (various dates and start times)
Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, N1 2DN
Adults £17, children £15
Age guidance: 2–5

Dracapella (see my write-up here)
Until 17 January (various dates and start times)
Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP
£22.50–£47.50 per person
Age guidance: 10+

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter
Until 18 January, various start times (usually 11:00 and 14:30 on weekends)
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
£10–£​​29 per person
Age guidance: 6–12