• Dads in London
  • Posts
  • 🐐 25 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (28 February–1 March)

🐐 25 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (28 February–1 March)

Author

Jeff – Dads in London
February 25, 2026

Get in front of 12,600 of the best people in London! Find out about sponsored ads here.

Hey DILFs!

This weekend’s fairy-tale family festival at the British Library has everything: Michael Rosen, A. F. Steadman, mini musicals called Rabunzel and CinderGorilla, dance from Akram Khan Company, opera rewrites, fashion illustrators helping you reimagine fairy-tale characters, West End singers…

It’s also completely sold out.

So…

This is your admittedly irregular reminder that if something sounds magical and it’s free or affordable and rare, tickets tend to vanish quickly. If you’d rather be the person smugly holding tickets instead of reading about them, that’s what The DILF Club is for.

For £3 a month you get:

  • A weekly “golden ticket” email flagging the events you genuinely need to book ahead for

  • Access to my full future-events database, filterable by date, venue, price and more

  • School holiday specials

  • Occasional deep dives into the topics you ask about most

Basically, fewer “Oh crap, I missed out again” moments.

For everyone still on the free tier, here are plenty of things that aren’t quite British Library levels of oversubscribed, but are still excellent and likely to go quickly – so don’t hang about.

Enjoy!

Jeff xx

Tracey Emin: A Second Life
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–18:00 (and daily until 31 August)
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
Adults £14, 12–18s £5, under-12s free

When Tracey Emin’s bed was auctioned off in 2014, it was bought for £2,546,500 by a German industrialist called Count Christian Duerckheim – who I would love to say has more money than sense, but he was a child refugee who became a very rich industrialist, so clearly I’m the only idiot in this discussion.

Count D is also very generous, having donated or loaned much of his vast collection to various British galleries for decades. That includes the famous, not entirely PG-rated, unmade bed – complete with a floor littered with vodka bottles, cigarette butts, condoms and blood-stained underwear.

The bed makes an appearance at this retrospective of Emin’s work, as does Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, for which Emin locked herself in an art gallery in Stockholm for three weeks and forced herself to enjoy painting again.

You’ll also see her video work from 1993 called Why I Never Became a Dancer (spoiler alert: it’s not “tight hamstrings”), and It’s Not the Way I Want to Die – a large-scale rollercoaster track about anxiety, vulnerability and the general business of being human.

There’s loads and loads more here, because this lady is nothing if not prolific. Paintings, videos, textiles, neons, written stuff, sculptures and installations – all in one place for you to appreciate and adore or think “Eh?” and “Huh?” to yourself.

I’m not entirely sure how suitable this one is for kids – I’ll report back once I’ve been. But if you think yours can handle it, and if you’re as intrigued by her as I am (even if you don’t necessarily “get” her), this feels close to essential viewing.

While you’re there…

👍️ It's a shame they de-wobblified the Millennium Bridge, because it would have been a child's dream. Thankfully, there are two new(ish) reasons your kids might want to walk along it after leaving the Tate Modern: Harry Potter, and Guardians of the Galaxy. (I think the bridge features in both movies? I'm basing this information on Wikipedia because I've never seen either.) A third reason to “do the bridge” is seeing St Paul's from the other side of the river: it looks incredible.

👍️ Uniqlo has been partnering with Tate Modern since 2021 to create year-round free family activities called Uniqlo Tate Play. The latest activity is called Make Studio: Memory, and TBH I have no idea what this description means so maybe you can make head or tail of it:

“You’re invited to think about the stories, feelings and moments that shape who we are; the ones we hold close, the ones that shift over time, and those we pass on. As you experiment and create, new connections can form between the past and the present, between what we remember and what we dream.

Inspired by artists who work with memory, emotion and transformation, this space encourages curiosity and care… it’s a welcoming place to slow down, reflect and make together – discovering how imagination can help keep our memories alive.”

Look, you know what? Uniqlo Tate Play activities are always amazing, and kids adore them. They’ll get something out of this one, even if I couldn’t for a moment tell you exactly what that might be.

Ramses and the Pharaohs' Gold: The Exhibition
Saturday 09:00–18:00 and Sunday 10:00–16:00 (and daily until 31 May)
Adults £32.05, 5–15s £28.05, under-5s free
Battersea Power Station, 2 Circus Road East, SW11 8DQ
Age guidance: 5+

Given Ramses spent 66 years engineering his own immortality, I’m sure he’d be delighted to know it paid off.

Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold: The Exhibition brings together 180 objects from his empire, all travelling from the Grand Egyptian Museum – many leaving Egypt for the very first time. These are the real things: coffins, statues, jewellery and burial goods created more than 3,000 years ago to make sure a king stayed powerful in both this life and the next.

The centrepiece is Ramses’ own coffin – the wooden outer sarcophagus that once held his mummified body. Not a replica: the actual coffin of the man who ruled for nearly seven decades, fought empires and left 20-metre versions of his own face carved into a mountainside.

Elsewhere, there are monumental stone statues of Ramses and his queens, carved to present him as eternally calm, eternally muscular and very much in charge. Given this man had up to eight “major” wives, dozens of secondary wives and concubines, and well over 100 children, we can probably assume those serene expressions were yet more fabulous PR.

There’s a haul of royal treasures from later Egyptian rulers buried with staggering quantities of gold – including Shoshenq II, whose falcon-headed silver coffin (silver being rarer than gold in ancient Egypt) contained a gold funerary mask and many jewel-encrusted bracelets and pectorals. Shoshenq II did not, apparently, have jewel-encrusted chest muscles: “pectorals” can also refer to large decorative pieces worn on the chest. You learn something new, etc. etc.

You’ll find animal mummies – cats, birds and other creatures preserved because the Egyptians believed they carried religious significance – along with jewellery and protective charms people were buried with to improve their odds in the afterlife.

The exhibition isn’t just glass cases and spotlights. There are large-scale projections and immersive galleries, including a dramatic recreation of the Battle of Kadesh – Ramses’ headline military moment against the Hittites (which ended in a stalemate, though Ramses’ version was considerably more triumphant).

At the time of writing, it hasn’t yet opened in London, so I can’t report back from the gift shop. It has, however, toured Paris, San Francisco, Sydney and Tokyo to consistently glowing reviews. If you’d like independent confirmation, try searching “Ramses Gold San Francisco review” or “Ramses Gold Sydney review” and have a scroll.

While you’re there…

👍️ You’re near Battersea Park, home to a sub-tropical garden, a herb garden, a children’s zoo, a boating lake and some of the best views in London.

👍️ An anti-recommendation for you: The Chimney Lift (formerly Lift 109) at Battersea Power Station. It costs upwards of £21 per adult, you’re up there for a maximum of seven minutes, and you’re stuck in a claustrophobic glass cage for the duration. Far better to make the most of one of London’s free views – whether that be Horizon 22, The Garden at 120, Sky Garden, 8 Bishopsgate or The Post Building Rooftop Garden. (Admittedly none of these are anywhere near Battersea, so you’ll have to save your rooftop view for another day.)

👉 Brief interruption in a horrible colour: if this newsletter has earned its keep, you can buy me a coffee. (Completely optional, of course.)

3: Attend the only rap battle you’ll ever see about beetles

The Great Big Bug Show
Saturday 28 February, 11:00 and 14:00
Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, 43 White Horse Road, London E1 0ND
£9 per person
Age guidance: 4–11

Watching this show’s trailer video made me feel the kind of second-hand cringe normally reserved for “Shall we do a quick icebreaker?” These dudes are SO earnestly uncool that I really hope it’s just a schtick. (Update: it is.)

They are aggressively, deliberately unslick. The Great Big Bug Show is an hour of poetry, rap and live music about minibeasts, delivered with total commitment and the kind of enthusiasm that suggests nobody involved has ever once worried about looking suave.

Poet Simon Mole and musician Gecko cover everything from beetles that fire chemicals out of their bottoms to minibeasts barely visible to the naked eye, via spiders with fangs wildly disproportionate to their body size. It’s science, but with a beat behind it.

The whole thing is inspired by Mole’s book A First Book of Bugs, so the facts are solid, even if subtlety has been formally declared optional.

While you’re there…

👍️ Want to relive that time you stayed in a yurt on the Mongolian Steppe, eating hearty mutton stews and dipping bread into salty milk tea? Then head over to London’s only yurt cafe, right by Limehouse DLR.

It’s a tent-like setup run as a social project by Royal Foundation of St Katharine, and the food will transport you straight back to those vast, windswept plains: sausage sandwiches, toast with Nutella, and full English breakfasts. There’s also a heated outdoor area and, sarcasm aside, it all looks pretty great.

Family Workshops - A Squash and a Squeeze
Sunday 1 March, 11:30 and 14:30
Little Angel Studios, Sebbon Street, N1 2EH
£10 per person
Age guidance: 3–8

Selling out fast!

I do like the message of A Squash and a Squeeze: be grateful for what you have. The journey to that moral, though, feels a bit “1950s housewife” to me. One Amazon reviewer put it more brutally than I perhaps would:

“In this book we meet a woman in cramped, sub-standard accommodation. Clearly oppressed by the patriohierarchy, she seeks assistance from a passing ‘Wise Old Man’. Rather than helping her, he instructs her to bring a succession of filthy animals into her already cramped home. After the final indignity of a cow dancing a jig on her kitchen table, he allows her to remove them. Clearly in a state of post-traumatic stress, she proclaims herself happy with her accommodation.

The message – or should I say propaganda – is that women should be instructed by men and that the proletariat should accept what they’re given by their ‘betters’. This book left me anything but ‘full of frolics and fiddle-de-dees’.”

Blimey, but yeah.

As well as the “patriohierarchical” problem, I’ve decided I also have issues with the rhythm. The syllable count lurches around so much it’s the equivalent of writing something like:

There once was a fellow from Bray
Who undertook an unnecessarily elaborate administrative process in order to carefully schedule his annual leave in the month of May

There are a handful of Amazon complaints about this too – though clearly most people don’t see things the way that Ed209, A Reader and I do because 6,600ish people have given it an average rating of 4.8.

Thankfully, none of this really matters for the latest family workshop at Little Angel Theatre, as the connection to the source material is extremely tenuous. You’ll be making puppet animals, and – because children are involved – there’ll be glitter on hand to ensure all cows, goats and pigs are as biologically inaccurate as possible.

In short: whether you love the book or have complicated feelings about it, you’ll still get to go home with a glitter-covered farm animal.

While you’re there…

👍️ Errr… you could go and see A Squash and a Squeeze? (They’re putting on the show as well as the workshop.)

👍️ Or if I’ve put you off that idea, there are two other shows to see: I Want My Hat Back and The Everywhere Bear (which is showing at Little Angel’s other venue a few minutes away).

Jock McFadyen with Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface) Exhibition
Saturday and Sunday, 10:00–17:00
Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, EC2V 5AE
Pay what you can

If you know The Pogues primarily as the band responsible for Fairytale of New York blaring out of every pub in December, you might not immediately expect one of its founding members to pivot to layered field recordings of Tube infrastructure.

But that’s precisely what Jem Finer has done, teaming up with painter Jock McFadyen for an exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery that turns the creaks, groans and grinding of the Northern and Central lines into an actual artwork.

For Londoners, the subject matter at least feels familiar. McFadyen paints the Tube as it actually appears at platform level: tiled walls, roundels, rails, cables, and the bits you end up staring at while waiting for a train that is, according to the board, “due”. Alongside those underground scenes are wide views of the city above ground, with open skies and stretches of London that feel a long way from the tunnel, even though they’re only just above it.

Jem Finer’s contribution uses recordings he made on the Northern and Central lines. He’s taken the mechanical noise of the network – the screech of rails, the low hum in the tunnels, the door pips and carriage rattles – and cut and layered them into a sound piece that plays through the gallery. So while you’re looking at paintings of the Tube, you’re hearing Tube sounds too – but in a way that’s been rearranged in a way that’s no doubt very creative and artistic and clever to people with better-trained ears than mine.

For anyone living outside London, I can’t imagine this being high on the cultural bucket list – even with the “pay what you can” policy. But if you’re a proud Londoner who’s spent more than your fair share of life reading Jack Daniels dissertations while someone calmly requests that Inspector Sands report to the operations room immediately, it’s going to be right up your street.

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.

Family Film Club: Little Amelie (PG)
Saturday 28 February, 11:00
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Adults £5, under-18s £2.50
Age guidance: 6+

Note: this has almost sold out. DILF Club members knew about this event weeks ago – when tickets were still widely available. Want to become a member? Sign up here for £3 a month.

Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First
Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00 (until 21:00 on Fridays) until 19 April
Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD
Adults £23, under-16s free

Samuel Laurence Cunnane: Blue Road
Tuesday–Sunday until 3 May, 10:00–18:00 (until 20:00 on Saturdays)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
FREE – no ticket required

Uniqlo Tate Play: Make Studio: Memory
Wednesdays 10:30–15:00 and weekdays 10:30–18:00 until 22 July
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all ages (under-5s only on Wednesdays)

Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life
Until 3 May, 10:00–18:00 (until 20:00 on Saturdays; closed Mondays)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
Adults £19, 12–16s £8, under-12s free

Who Let The Gods Out
Until 22 March, various start times
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
£10 per person
Age guidance: 8–13

The Jolly Postman (exhibition)
Tuesday–Sunday until January 2027, 10:00–17:00
The Postal Museum, 15–20 Phoenix Place, WC1X 0DA
Free with museum entry (adults £18.50, 2–15s £11, under-2s free)

Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends (full review coming soon!)
Daily until 15 November, 10:00–17:45
Young V&A, Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA
£11 per person (under-4s free)

Voyage to the Deep – Underwater Adventures
Daily until 1 November, 10:30–17:30
Horniman Museum & Gardens, 100 London Road, SE23 3PQ
Adults £9.80, children £7, under-3s free
Age guidance: 2+

Octonauts: Adventure at the Horniman
Daily until 1 November, 10:00–17:30
Horniman Museum & Gardens, 100 London Road, SE23 3PQ
FREE

Samurai
Daily until 4 May, 10:00​–17:00 (Fridays until 20:30)
British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG
Adults £25, under-16s free

Gianni Versace Retrospective
Daily until 1 March, various timeslots throughout the day
Arches London Bridge, 8 Bermondsey Street, SE1 2ER
Adults £29.75, 5–15s £18.75, under-5s free

Mundo Pixar Experience (full review coming soon!)
Daily until 28 June, various timeslots throughout the day
Fulton Road, Wembley Park, HA9 0TF
Adults £34, 3–15s £22, under-3s free
Age guidance: suitable for all (but prams will need to be stored in a designated area)

Marie-Antoinette: An Eye for Beauty (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 March, 10:00–17:00
The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1U 3BN
FREE

Love Letters: Love Letters: 500 years of devotion, longing, sacrifice and passion (see my write-up here)
Tuesday–Sunday until 12 April
The National Archives, Kew, TW9 4DU
FREE – no booking required

Water Pantanal Fire
Daily until 31 May, 10:00–18:00
Science Museum, Exhibition Road, SW7 2DD
Free – admission ticket required

Hawaiʻi: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans
Daily until 25 May, 10:00–17:00 (Fridays until 20:30)
British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG
Adults £16, under-16s free

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting
Daily until 4 May, 10:30–18:00 (until 21:00 on some days)
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Adults £23, 12–25 £5, under-12s free

Planetarium Go! (see my write-up here)
Until 1 March, various timeslots throughout the day
£15 per person per show (under-4s free, family packages also available)
Battersea Power Station, Circus Road West, SW11 8DD
Age guidance: different shows are suitable for different ages

REPLAY: A Limitless Recycled Playground (see my write-up here)
Daily until 12 April, various slots throughout the day
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)