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🧔🏻 26 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (18–19 April)

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Jeff – Dads in London
April 15, 2026

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Hey DILFs!

In news that feels engineered to lure a younger audience into a national museum, Lily Allen has loaned the artwork for her latest album cover to the National Portrait Gallery. The reason I’m telling you this is because it might be enough to convince your child to go on a trip to the NPG – and then, once they’re inside, it’ll be slightly easier to persuade them to check out the Lucien Freud exhibition with you before it disappears in a couple of weeks.

I’m not sure if Lily Allen’s latest album (or indeed any of her oeuvre) is remotely suitable for that age group. Or if children are even aware of her existence. But if it is, and if they are, feel free to use it as leverage while you still can.

If that’s not your sort of thing, or if Lily Allen feels like something to revisit later in life (if at all), there are plenty of other options below.

Enjoy!

Jeff xx

Ty Locke: Hand Me Downs
Wednesday–Saturday until 16 May, 12:00–18:00
Copperfield Gallery, 6 Copperfield Street, SE1 0EP
FREE

This website has clearly been designed for someone with much better eyesight than me. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic, but I swear I gave myself new wrinkles and a possible eye-hernia from trying to read the exhibition description. It also doesn’t help that the description is so long-winded that it’s tempting to throw in the towel a few sentences in – which is such a shame, because this thing sounds FASCINATING.

So, as I already need to book an appointment with the botox doctor and optician, allow me to spare you both by explaining what’s going on.

When you first walk in, it all looks a bit empty but also quite grand – like you’re stepping into the stately home of someone who went bankrupt. There’s a chandelier, some armour, a few framed things on the walls, and other bits and pieces that seem like they belonged to someone blue-blooded. But all is not as it seems (ooooh!). I promise this isn’t a spoiler, but the chandelier is made from cigarette filters, the carpet is Rizla papers, and the armour has been assembled from those plastic party trays you’d normally see under a pile of sausage rolls. Plenty more objects in the space aren’t quite what they seem either, but I’ll leave you to spot them while you’re there.

To understand what’s going on, it helps to know that Ty Locke didn’t grow up with anything you’d recognise as a family heirloom, let alone a stately home, so he’s recreated one using whatever was available to him as a child.

Ty was one of seven children moving between addresses with a single mum, so you’ll also see moving boxes around the space. Other works circle back to his mum – such as loving letters and fragments of a poem, which she wrote for her children while dealing with a recurring drug addiction.

The take-home message? Possibly that inheritance isn’t just about objects but whatever happens to get passed down – whether that’s actual things, habits or memories. Or maybe it’s just that heirlooms only start to look important once someone puts them in a gallery – and a chandelier made from cigarette filters is as good a place as any to start. Either way, it’s a clever way of turning a fairly messy childhood into something you can actually walk around and look at.

There you go – everything explained, and no botox required.

While you’re there…

👍️ Borough Market is a few minutes’ walk away. If you haven’t been a million times already and don’t mind crowds, you’ll probably enjoy it.

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

Young Love Club – The Indie Disco for Indie kids and their kids
Sunday 19 April, 13:00–16:00
Big Penny Social, 1 Priestley Way, E17 6AL
£8.82 per person
Age guidance: suitable for all

Now THIS is a thoroughly decent event description. It feels like it was written by someone who cares about the experience you’ll have – which is a nice change from the intern who has a pub to attend and writes a single sentence that tells us nothing.

I love this description so much that I’m going to quote it almost verbatim:

“After spending years squeezing into the skinniest of jeans, dragging and losing thousands of CDs across London, running clubs across Shoreditch and Camden, now, nicely settled into middle agedhood, we noticed a wasteland.

Hundreds of former indie kids walking aimlessly round the farmers markets on a Saturday morning with their kids, wishing for something more from their lives.

We miss hoodies, we yearn for sticky dancefloors and dancing to the coolest music from Yo! Majesty or Hadouken! or track or straight up bangers from The Walkmen, The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys & Klaxons.

We are bringing these days back. But the stickiness will probably be from spilt apple juice or baby sick.

This is Young Love Club, where we will get to relive, this time with our kids, the glory days of our youths. This time we will not end up in squat parties, but home in time to get the kids’ dinner and ready for Noel’s House Party – that’s still a thing right?

Dress up how you did in the time of ‘Indie Sleaze, whether you were a Mardy Bum in skinny jeans and tweed or a “New Raver” in American Apparel day glo and hi tops. Get your kids to sport the look too!

We will turn Big Penny into a haven for indie disco nostalgia and make sure there’s loads of fun for the kids along the way too with facepainters and more activities tbc.”

I’ve never even been a huge indie fan, but now I’m feeling nostalgic for a youth I never had, a beard I never grew, and a striped shirt I never wore.

The Daily Scream (Le Cri Quotidien) in English - with live music
Saturday 18 April at 11:00 and 15:00, Sunday 19 April at 11:00
The Well Walk Theatre, 49 Willow Road, NW3 1TS
£15.90 per person
Age guidance: 8+

The Daily Scream is a film that’s a bit like Spitting Image, but French. So instead of rubber politicians shouting at each other, you get paper puppets, a live cellist, and a decidedly more existential take on the news.

It starts with a woman sitting down to read a newspaper, but the newspaper takes on a life of its own. Small paper scenes play out as she turns the pages, representing each news story. And just like a real newspaper, you get a really varied assortment of items, one after the other. There’s a group of furious politicians arguing, then a car crash in the middle of winter with people wandering around trying to make sense of it, then a wedding, then something about battery-farmed hens, then suddenly you’re somewhere else again before you’ve quite worked out what the last thing was.

And it’s not like the woman is just sitting back and watching it all happen: she’s pulling paper figures out the pages and setting things in motion herself. And there’s a cellist off to the side of her, playing along as all this is happening.

The film has been described in multiple publications as “surrealist”, so if you’re feeling perplexed or simply not French enough to appreciate it, don’t worry: its meaning isn’t meant to be straightforward. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s trying to say something about the never-ending cycle of both important and completely irrelevant news that bombards our waking moments. Or it could just as easily be a critical commentary on cellists and their insistence on being the centre of attention. The good news is that there’s no right answer. And it’s absolutely beautiful to watch, so it’s worth it even if it’s less of a beginning–middle–end sort of thing than your usual kids’ film.

While you’re there…

👍️ Hampstead Heath is right there. Make the most of it!

👍️ Or for something less outdoorsy, Hampstead institutions The Flask, The Wells and The Holly Bush are within stumbling distance.

Yard Sale at Museum of the Home
Sunday 19 April, 11:00–16:00 (early access from 10:00)
Museum of the Home, 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA
£5 per person (£8 for early access)

Before we go any further, let’s establish that “yard sales” are not, and have never been, a British tradition. We don’t have yards. We barely even have front steps. And yet here’s the Museum of the Home – an institution dedicated to British domestic life, in a building that predates the United States – acting like a yard sale is as normal for Brits as shouting “WHEYYY” when someone drops a glass in a pub.

A yard sale (and its more weatherproof but equally space-hogging sibling, the garage sale) is where you put your rubbish on a table outside and charge people for the privilege of taking it away. It’s the US version of a car boot sale, but with more enthusiasm and less mud.

At this museum “yard sale”, no one’s clearing out their loft – and you won’t find a single person haggling over a one-legged Action Man, an incomplete Lego set or a stolen power tool. Instead, there’ll be “a fantastic array of one-of-a-kind items, crafted pieces and thoughtful designs from local makers, artists, designers and small businesses”.

It’s a craft fair, basically – where you can get your hands on some “design-forward handmade ceramic homewares”, linen prints that will “positively energise your dining table”, “beautiful vintage Italian espresso pots” and “future archeology”, among many, many other things that are bespoke and hand-crafted and sustainable and empowering. I’ve looked at some of the websites of the makers who’ll be at the craft fair yard sale, and it’s clear it’s all top-quality stuff. And you’ll get it for less than you would in an actual shop.

To be clear, I’m not having a go at what’s actually on offer here – it looks great, and we should absolutely be supporting this kind of thing. I just refuse to believe we’ve reached the point where we’re calling it a yard sale.

While you’re there…

👍️ Columbia Road Flower Market is open between 08:00 and 15:00 on Sundays only, and it’s less than a ten-minute walk away. One idiot reviewer brought down the average Google rating by complaining that he’s allergic to flowers, while another gave it one star despite having never visited. One very valid reason for many other one-star reviews is how busy it is: it’s heaving by the afternoon. But if you go early and don’t intend to drive there, you should be fine. And the flowers are beautiful.

👍️ Shoreditch Park Playground was rebuilt a couple of years ago, and Hackney Council has done an excellent job with it. There’s a fantastic hillside slide with climbing tower, balance beams, a sand-play area, and a variety of equipment for wheelchair users – including a “chair swing” and an accessible roundabout. The one drawback is that they’ve planted a load of wildflowers around the place, which are now taller than many three-year-olds; they’re very pretty but can make it hard to spot your kids easily.

👍️ The Towpath Cafe is a bit of an institution. It’s so famous that – in common with the Granny Smith apple, John Travolta and Iceland (the supermarket) – it has its own Wikipedia page. The menu is one of those “big list handwritten on a blackboard” things, where you have to guess the portion size by how much it costs. There’s a focus on high-quality ingredients, and the location is hard to beat.

5: Trace 125 years of Black British music through the objects that helped shape it

The Music Is Black: A British Story at V&A East Museum
Daily until 3 January 2027, from 10:00
V&A East Museum, 107 Carpenters Road, E20 2AR
Adults £22, 12–17s £10, under-12s free

It’s like the V&A looked at the plethora of Tate galleries that have cropped up around the country and, after 160-odd years of minding its own business in South Kensington, thought, “Right, we’re not having them run away with this.” And then built five more V&A museums in just over a decade.

It wasn’t simply a case of shifting objects out to cheaper postcodes (apart from with V&A East Storehouse, where it was very much the case). Each museum in the collection has its own role, and a proper reason for being there.

The new V&A East Museum, for example, takes a different approach from how the V&A usually presents its collections.. At the OG museum, you’re mostly moving through objects – ceramics, fashion, etc. – with the context explained alongside. In Stratford, it’s the other way round: you start with a theme (identity, music, making things…), and the objects are brought in to support whatever point is being made. So instead of just looking at, say, a jacket, you’re looking at what that jacket says about the culture that produced it – who wore it, why it mattered, and how it connects to everything else going on at the time.

There’ll be a lot of permanent galleries, but the first temporary exhibition will be about Black British music, covering roughly the last 125 years. It moves forward in stages – starting with early influences and working through to the point where distinct British genres begin to take shape, and then into the music that’s come since. It’s all laid out so you can see how one leads into the next.

The objects are still doing plenty of heavy lifting. There’s a piano used by Winifred Atwell, clothes worn by Little Simz and Dame Shirley Bassey, and Jme’s Super Nintendo, where he first started making music. But they’re placed at specific points in that timeline, so you understand why they matter when you see them, rather than having to piece it together afterwards.

By the time you get to the later sections, you’re into genres that developed here and then spread outward – jungle, garage, grime, drill, afrobeats… – which, depending on who you ask, were either groundbreaking or the end of civilisation.

While you’re there…

👍️ Check out the aforementioned V&A East Storehouse – which, yes, exists because the V&A loves hoarding and ran out of space in South Kensington. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a particularly exciting place to go. But this is the V&A we’re talking about – not your weird uncle who’s stacked three broken fax machines on top of a pile of supermarket receipts in the bathroom and kept every egg carton since 1987.

It’s a three-storey warehouse where thousands of objects are stored and presented beautifully, but also studied and repaired in full view. (Check out this video for an idea of what it’s really like.) There are mini displays to dip into, conservators you can spy on, and even “Object Encounters” where staff wheel out highlights for a closer look. The storehouse also has an extremely cool service called “Order an Object” (available at the Kensington branch too): book in advance, and you can choose almost anything from the collection for a one-to-one viewing.

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.

The Coming of Age
Tuesday–Sunday until 29 November
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, NW1 2BE
FREE

The Last Princess of Punjab
Daily until 8 November, 10:00–18:00
Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, W8 4PX
Free with admission (adults £24.70, 5–17s £12.40, under-5s free)

Egg-citing Easter Adventure on the IFS Cloud Cable Car
Until 21 April, 12:00–17:00
IFS Cable Car, Western Gateway, Royal Victoria Dock, E16 1FA
From £10.50 per person (premium experiences cost more), purchased in-person at the ticket office

Easter Quest at Eltham Palace and Gardens
Until 19 April, 10:00–17:00
Eltham Palace and Gardens, Court Yard, Greenwich, SE9 5NP
£2 per child (plus admission ticket: adults £15, 5–17s £9, under-5s free); pay for the quest when you arrive at the venue

Mundo Pixar Experience (see my write-up here)
Until 28 June, 09:00/10:00–20:00 (earlier start time on weekends)
Fulton Road, Wembley, HA9 0TF
Adults £34–£36, 2–15s £22–£24, under-2s free
Age guidance: suitable for all

Fairy Tales (see my write-up here)
Until 23 August, various timeslots throughout each day (usually 09:30–16:30)
The British Library, 96 Euston Road, NW1 2DB
Adults £13.50, 5–16s £13.50, 1–5s £6.75, under-1s free
Age guidance: 3–10

The Elephant Trail (see my write-up here)
Until 26 April
Battersea Power Station, Circus Road West, SW11 8DD
FREE

Astronomers Take Over (see my write-up here)
New permanent interactive experience, 10:00–17:00 daily
National Maritime Museum, Romney Road, SE10 9NF
Experience + planetarium £16 per person, experience only £8 per person
Age guidance: 4+

Seurat and the Sea
Daily until 17 May, 10:00–18:00
Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 0RN
Adults £18, under-19s free

Cleopatra: The Experience (see my write-up here)
Daily until 12 July, timeslots from 10:00
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £27, 4–15s £22, under-4s free
Age guidance: suitable for all

Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art (see my write-up here)
Daily until 1 November, 10:00–18:00
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, SE1 6HZ
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (see my write-up here)
Various dates and times until 26 April)
Puppet Theatre Barge, Blomfield Road (opposite 35), W9 2PF
Adults £15, 2–16s £12, under-2s free
Age guidance: 3–7

Museum of Edible Earth
Daily until 26 April (Sunday–Wednesday 10:00–18:00, Thursday and Friday 12:00–20:00, and Saturday 10:00–20:00)
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
Pay what you can
Age guidance: suitable for all, but guided earth-tasting sessions (arguably the most “fun” part for kids?) is 16+ only

David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting (see my write-up here)
Tuesday–Sunday until 23 August, 10:00–18:00
Serpentine North, West Carriage Drive, W2 2AR
FREE, but booking required

Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends (see my write-up here)
Daily until 15 November, 10:00–17:45
Young V&A, Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA
£11 per person (under-4s free)

Ramses and the Pharaohs' Gold: The Exhibition (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 May (various timeslots)
Adults £32.05, 5–15s £28.05, under-5s free
Battersea Power Station, 2 Circus Road East, SW11 8DQ
Age guidance: 5+

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

Tracey Emin: A Second Life (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 August, 10:00–18:00
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
Adults £14, 12–18s £5, under-12s free

Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style (see my write-up here)
Daily until 18 October, 10:00–17:00
The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, SW1A 1AA
Adults £22, 5–17s £11, under-5s free