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🛹 35 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (2–4 May)

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Jeff – Dads in London
April 29, 2026

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Hi DILFs!

I know, I know – Loughton barely counts as London. (Zone 6!!!) But I’m making an exception, because it can be reached on the Central line and isn’t too much of a faff (unless you count “spending half an hour being slowly cooked” as faff, which I’m choosing not to).

Anyway, I’m mentioning Loughton because it contains the Postal Museum’s storage site, which is where they keep all the good stuff that doesn’t fit in the main museum. In fact, it seems to me that the storage site is even better than what they have at the main museum: quad-bike-riding posties, rows of historic pillar boxes, and 150 years of postal oddities such as Victorian underground mail systems and modern delivery gear.

And now you can get a guided tour there, followed by a bit of time to wander around on your own. It’s worth noting that this is a working storage space rather than a polished museum, so there are fewer signs and labels, but you do get to be much closer to everything. Also, “Please be aware that the Postal Museum Store has limited heating so please dress for the weather.” Which means you’ll need to pack for two seasons: summer on the tube, then winter in the postal store.

Plenty more to be getting on with this weekend too: check it out!

Cheers,

Jeff xx

Skate 50
Various dates until 21 June, various timeslots
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
Pay what you can: £0–£10 (free for skateboarders)
Age guidance: suitable for all

Back in 1976 – when Pret a Manger was just a twinkle in its owners’ eye, when Starbucks was a humble coffee bean wholesaler operating from a single location in Seattle, and when a Giraffe was simply an animal and not also a rapidly-rising-then-struggling-to-survive restaurant chain – there was the Southbank Skate Park.

These days, the area around the Southbank Centre has an ever-growing selection of high street chains – many of which don’t last very long – but the skate park has stayed strong for half a century.

It came about almost by accident. When Queen Elizabeth Hall was built in the late 1960s, the concrete undercroft was left open to the public – and it didn’t take much for skateboarders to realise that all the ledges and pillars were perfect for throwing themselves around on bits of wood with wheels. And because it was covered by the hall above it and available 24/7, people could use it whenever they wanted.

As skateboarding took off in the UK, the undercroft became the go-to spot in London. The year 1976 is generally taken as the starting point, although I’m not entirely clear why.

It’s now one of the longest continuously used skate spots in the world. There was a bit of an iffy moment in the early 2000s when plans were put forward to redevelop the space into more coffee shops, but 150,000 signatures put a stop to that one – and it’s now protected as a permanent skate space through an agreement with the Southbank Centre.

To mark its 50th birthday, the Southbank Centre is putting on Skate 50, a multimedia exhibition looking at the history of the space and the community built around it. It pulls together photography, film and sound to trace how the undercroft evolved from a leftover bit of architecture into the birthplace of British skateboarding. That includes everything from archive footage to “fashion-forward portraiture” from the noughties and contemporary depictions of the space today, which should give you a decent sense of why it’s still going.

While you’re there…

👍️ Visit the skate park! And watch some of the world’s best and worst skaters fling themselves around concrete banks, ramps and ledges.

👍️ Get tickets for You Are Here (12+) on Sunday – “An epic, one-off pop-culture spectacular that invites you on an electrifying journey through 75 years of British music, dance, theatre, fashion and film.” There are timed entry slots every 15 minutes from 14:00, and the experience lasts about two hours. Many slots have sold out – so get in quick! (Also: become a Dads in London Club member, so you don’t miss out on these things in future.)

2: Plant seeds, chat to chickens and call it a green day well spent

Go Green Fest
Sunday 3 May, 11:00–16:00
Fulham Palace, Bishop’s Avenue, SW6 6EA
Adults £5, children £3
Age guidance: suitable for all

Please could someone diagnose an obsessive researching tendency of mine. Example: I got one and a half sentences into the description of Go Green Fest and had to stop immediately to investigate sentence two: “Previously known as the Green Meet, the event has been reimagined as a hands-on day of discovery, play and inspiration for all ages.”

Is this true? Did they really reimagine the entire day, or just the name (in a Hermes/Evri kind of way)? How much did they actually change? I can’t just let it go.

So, because of this weird affliction of mine, I found last year’s Green Meet brochure and compared it to this year’s Go Green Fest brochure. And, of course, they didn’t make anything up.

While last year’s Green Meet covered broadly the same ground (gardening, wildlife and sustainability), it involved lots of standing around and listening to talks, tours and explanations. There were also plenty of small extra fees for various activities, which always feels a bit icky.

This year, it’s more about getting involved and doing things. There’s still plenty to learn, but the focus is on making, building and getting stuck in – and it’s all been structured in a way that’s easier to navigate with children in tow. It’s also now a simple ticketed event rather than a scattergun payment system.

The activities include woodworking workshops, eco-craft activities, “Guardians of the Rainforest” sessions, bee walks, chicken chats (wait what?), seed planting, plastic turtle making (again… huh?), bottle upcycling, zine making, guided garden tours, biodiversity walks, and short talks and demos on various topics throughout the day. There’ll also be garden games, green market stalls and THE FIRST FACE PAINTING SESSION OF THE SEASON!! (As you’ll know if you’re a long-time DIL reader, every outdoor spring/summer event has face painting.)

I promise you: this is just a small sample of the events and activities on offer on the day. I counted 29 in total, and the only one not suitable for children is “Create your own spritz”. But I have it all worked out: Beginner Birdwatching is in the same area as the spritz-making, so they can go to that while I go to mine.

As for my affliction… I asked some friends who know me well, and each of them diagnosed me with a different-but-similar medical condition – “Acute Scepticism”, “Due Diligence Disorder” and “Pathological Need to Fact-Check”. My recovery process apparently involves not looking these things up, so I’ll have to trust that these are genuine health concerns.

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

Family Film Club: Finding Dory
Saturday 2 May, 11:00
Adults £5, under-18s £2.50
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Age guidance: 5+

As is the case with all Pixar animations, Finding Dory can’t just be about an amnesiac fish finding her parents: it needs to have an extra emotional undercurrent. So, while we watch Dory forget her way into various scrapes while searching the sea, we also come to realise that:

  1. Limitations don’t cancel your strengths

  2. Persistence beats competence

  3. Being different isn’t something that needs “fixing”

  4. “Home” isn’t a physical place – it’s a state of being and belonging

And I’m on board with all those things; I’m just not sure if children pick up on them. (Has a study been done? Do we know if people are disproportionately better-adjusted if they spent their childhood watching the Toy Story, Inside Out and Finding… franchises? I need to check.) Regardless, this is still a thoroughly entertaining film – and it’s now 10 years old, so there’s a decent chance this will be their first time seeing it on the big screen.

It follows Dory, the aforementioned absent-minded aquatic, as she sets off to find the parents she’s only just remembered exist, but can’t remember anything about. As this is a sequel to Finding Nemo, Marlin and Nemo reappear as her support crew, along with many other familiar fishy faces.

The cast list is ridiculous, by the way. There are so many big names on here that it makes you wonder whether they’d actually welcome AI taking their physical roles – as long as they could still do the voices. You’ve got Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton (RIP), Eugene Levy, Idris Elba, Dominic West, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Hader, Kate McKinnon, John Ratzenberger, Willem Dafoe and Allison Janney – plus many others who are probably famous but I just don’t recognise them.

Anyway. It’s a great film about a fish who can’t remember anything. Your children may leave the cinema with a deeper understanding of identity and belonging – or just a renewed interest in fish. Either way, it’s a lovely way to spend a morning.

While you’re there…

👍️ Get involved in Carnival Mas (masquerade) costume and dance workshops at Barbican’s Sankofa Community Carnival this Saturday. You’ll “explore colour, texture and storytelling” as you create Carnival Mas costumes inspired by Carnival traditions, and then will “get to learn a range of African Caribbean dance movements and folklore styles rooted in the African Diaspora”. Suitable for ages 14+.

MakeBeth
Sunday 3 May, 11:00 and 14:00
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£13.75 per person
Age guidance: 7–11

Considering Shakespeare loved wordplay, I’m surprised there aren’t more pun-tastic adaptations of his work. In fact, the only one I could find is The Bomb-itty of Errors – an “add-rap-tation” of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors – which is the worst title I’ve ever seen. (There’s much potential for x-rated movies, though. I came across a website that suggested As You Lick It, King Rear and Titties Androgynous, among others.)

So while I find the title MakeBeth to be particularly egregious – and I’m CONVINCED they came up with the title first on a drunk night out and then shoved a storyline inside it – I have to give them some credit for keeping the pun tradition alive.

MakeBeth is a transformation of Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy into “a joyful, laugh-out-loud, cardBARD adventure!” (“CardBARD” is definitely something I regret reading.) Part of the joy comes from it being a make-a-long show: a cardboard-filled reworking of the original, where the audience helps build the story as it goes. You’ll be making things like ingredients for the witches’ cauldron, masks for Banquo’s ghost and the moving trees of Birnam Wood.

Three people on stage multitask their way through acting, playing music live, encouraging the audience and keeping everything moving. The darker themes of Macbeth are there (ambition, murder, etc. etc.), but they’re handled with enough silliness to stop it tipping into nightmare territory.

I read an interview with Sam Wilde, the brains behind MakeBeth, and he makes it clear that the pun isn’t the reason for the show’s existence. (Sorry Sam: I shouldn’t have doubted you earlier.) He says that “this is aimed at being our younger audience members’ first experience of Shakespeare, so we really want it to feel welcoming, exciting, and not intimidating. If they come away thinking, ‘That was fun’ and even better just have an opinion about Macbeth‘s behaviour, then that’s a huge win. More than anything, we hope it opens the door to Shakespeare rather than closing it – showing that these stories can be playful, accessible and relevant. If it sparks a bit of curiosity or confidence to explore more, then we’ve done what we set out to do.”

OK, I’m sold. I still don’t like the title, but I’m sold. Which is slightly annoying, because I was quite enjoying being sceptical.

Zurbarán
Daily until 23 August, 10:00–18:00 (Fridays until 21:00)
The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN
£20–£22 (off-peak/peak), under-18s free

You know what I like about the National Gallery? I’ll tell you. I like how their exhibition descriptions are actually quite lovely. They steer clear of International Art English and really try to help you understand what you’ll see, why it matters and what you’ll get out of the visit. I detect a smidge (maybe more of a smidge-and-three-quarters) of AI, but it’s minor – and nowhere near anything as flagrant as this.

The NG employee who wrote about the Zurbarán exhibition is on a mission to make you aware of how quiet and calm the gallery will be when you visit: we’re told it’s a “rare chance to spend time with Zurbarán’s paintings in the peaceful rooms of the National Gallery” and that we can “Move between intimate still lifes and soaring altarpieces in hushed galleries”. Are we subtly being warned that this is no place for unruly kids? Are we being primed into believing that the potential zeroness of visitor attendance is by design? Whatever the reason for all this talk of hushed galleries, I’m well up for a bit of quiet after the insanity that was the Natural History Museum during the Easter holidays.

I’ll admit I’d never heard of Zurbarán before today – and yes of course I’m copying and pasting his name each time because I keep misspelling it and putting the accent in the wrong place. But I’ve done some research and can tell you he was a Spanish Baroque painter known for his religious paintings. Unlike the way religious figures were presented as perfect in Renaissance-era art, Zurbarán’s Baroque versions looked much more real – where a saint’s weathered skin and a monk’s wool coat look so tangible that they seem more like a still life than an idealised figure.

Talking of still life… he was also, as mentioned earlier, a fan of the orange. And the lemon. And the rose. And ceramics. If you’re interested in my ranking of art genres, still lifes form the bottom rung. But I know nothing about art, and anyway: I’m told the still life stuff makes up a minority of the exhibition.

Zurbarán was also notoriously “independent” (ahem euphemism). He once refused to sit the exam required for admittance into the Seville Guild of Painters, claiming his talent and royal patronage made the local exams irrelevant. He also completely ignored the concept of perspective in his art. For example, he just didn’t seem to care about backgrounds. And he’d place furniture at weird angles that didn’t follow the laws of physics. Some called it clumsiness, others said it made his scenes feel more mystical; you can decide for yourself. And he was obsessed with how the fabrics appeared in his paintings – he’d spend so much time on the heavy folds of a monk’s habit that he seemed to run out of steam before it was time to focus on the poor guy’s face.

But his independent attitude triumphed… until it didn’t. While his work was popular at the start of his career, it fell out of style in the last decades of his life.

Today, though, he’s back on the pedestal. He’s known as one of the great artists of Spain’s Golden Age – and as someone who inspired the first generation of Modern artists due to his willingness to ignore the conventional rules of painting.

While you’re there…

👍️ See the work of one of Britain’s most famous horse painters at a focused exhibition on George Stubbs. Best known for his unusually accurate portraits of horses, Stubbs once spent 18 months drawing and studying them in a barn, which I guess explains why they look unnervingly real. The show centres on Scrub – a rider-free portrait of a rearing racehorse, and one of the first life-size portraits to depict horses without a human presence in British history.

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.

NIGO: From Japan with Love
Daily until 4 October, 10:00–17:00 Monday–Thursday and 10:00–18:00 Friday–Sunday
Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG
Adults £19, 6–17s £10, under-6s free

The Enormous Turnip
Saturday–Monday, various start times
Puppet Theatre Barge, Blomfield Road (opposite 35), W9 2PF
Adults £15, 2–16s £12, under-2s free
Age guidance: 3–8

Tortoise and the Hare
Various dates until 31 May, various start times
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
£10 per person
Age guidance: 3–7

A Tale Of Us
Saturday and Sunday, 10:30, 12:30 and 15:00
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
Adult + child £26 (additional adult or child £13)
Age guidance: 0–18 months

Paulo Nimer Pjota: Encantados
Wednesday–Sunday until 23 August, 12:00–18:00 (Wednesdays until 21:00)
South London Gallery, 65–67 Peckham Road, SE5 8UH
FREE – no booking required

David Bowie: You're Not Alone (see my write-up here)
Until 10 September (most days), 10:30–16:30 or 17:30 depending on the day
Lightroom, 12 Lewis Cubitt Square, N1C 4DY
Adults £29.50, 3–18s £19.50, under-3s free (family discounts available at certain times of day)
Age guidance: suitable for all

Early Netherlandish drawings (see my write-up here)
Daily until 20 September, 10:00–17:00 (until 20:30 on Fridays)
British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG
FREE

Paint! Pattern! Print! The Textiles of Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell (see my write-up here)
Tuesday–Saturday until 13 September, 11:00–18:00
Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3XF
Adults £11.50, 12–17s £9.50, under-12s free

Textile Art Redefined (see my write-up here)
Daily until 10 May, 10:00–18:00
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, SW3 4RY
FREE

The Wallace Collection at War
Daily until 25 October, 10:00–17:00
The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1U 3BN
FREE

Konrad Mägi
Tuesday–Sunday until 12 July, 10:00–17:00
Dulwich Picture Gallery, College Road, SE21 7AD
Adults £18, under-18s free

Ty Locke: Hand Me Downs (see my write-up here)
Wednesday–Saturday until 16 May, 12:00–18:00
Copperfield Gallery, 6 Copperfield Street, SE1 0EP
FREE

The Music Is Black: A British Story at V&A East Museum (see my write-up here)
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

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)

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

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

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