London

Art
Phoebe Unwin
The 28-year-old Slade graduate’s playful paintings combine figurative and abstract elements with a hint of surrealism. She has a solo exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery and will be showing at Wilkinson in London next year.

David Blandy
Thirty-one-year-old Blandy’s often humorous work explores the relationship between popular culture, identity and everyday life. He will be showing at Alma Enterprises in London in November.

Dick Evans
The gothic-tinged 3-D works of Evans, 31, include a giant black wave and hydroponic sculptures incorporating water with black wax and steel. Upcoming London shows include a group exhibition at Maureen Paley next year. Feature continues

Books
Lucie Whitehouse, ‘The House at Midnight’ (Bloomsbury, January)
A pacy literary thriller about a group of university friends whose lives are turned upside down when one of them inherits a rural pile.

Sathnam Sanghera, ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’ (Viking, March)
Affecting memoir tells the connected stories of journalist Sanghera’s secretive Sikh family and his fraught escape from their orbit.

James Miller, ‘Lost Boys’ (Little, Brown, July)
All over London, boys are disappearing from their homes and schools… This powerful debut novel is a critique of Western culture which has been compared to ‘Lord of the Flies’.

Clubs
Brodinski Parisian
DJ Brodinski's recent remixes of Klaxons and Bonde Do Role have caused quite a stir among the electro / rock ‘n’ rave crowd. Listen out for him at Adventures in the Beetroot Field at Fabric on October 18

Thoughtless Hussies
Three DJ tykes and party promoters whose feast of French-led electro bombs, abrasive pop and scrot-tingling bass have made them a cheeky hit at Koko, 333 and Bar Music Hall.

Alex Metric
The Marine Parade signing chops up electro, raucous rock riffs, house slabs and acid loops. He’s already big on the breaks scene (he DJs at Chew The Fat on October 12) but this producer is destined for cross-genre success.

Dance
Sally Marie
An eccentric talent, Marie (37), with her fledgling company, Sweetshop Revolution – is gearing up to do an aerialist piece about vampires; and she’s planning a showgirls’ exposé called ‘Glitti Titti’.

Sergiy Polunin
The newest member of the Royal Ballet, this 17-year-old Ukrainian trained at the Royal Ballet School. Don’t expect him to leap into soloist roles instantly, but he has already won international competitions and was named Young British Dancer of the Year 2007.

Hofesh Shechter
Completes his fast-track, hat-trick surge towards public recognition with performances at Sadler’s Wells (September 28 and 29).

Film and TV
Oli Blackburn
A director of short films, music videos and commercials who has just shot ‘Donkey Punch’, his first feature, for Warp X, a low-budget feature studio backed by Film4 and the UK Film Council.

Luke Hyams
Writer and director behind ‘Dubplate Drama’, an interactive TV series currently showing on Channel Four. With no formal training, Hyams developed his talent with West London’s Youth Culture Television.

Stephen Leslie
Made the short film, ‘I Was Catherine the Great’s Stable Boy’ ten years ago and has since worked on various factual TV projects. Next year Leslie will direct his script for ‘Release’, a dark comedy about a US town that suspends all laws for one day every five years.

Music
Tinseltown
With a name like Tinseltown, a band had better be glam, in-yer-face, melodramatic and, well, a good-looking bunch. This mysterious London five-piece tick all those boxes and they’re destined for greatness. Fronted by the urgent-voiced Romily Alice – the Karen O you can understand – Tinseltown have been described as a femme-fronted Razorlight, but we prefer to focus on the fact that they also sound like The Stooges, Blondie and Roxy Music. Be first to catch them when they support Blood Red Shoes at Bush Hall (October 10) and Cajun Dance Party at 229 (October 20).

Lo-Fi Culture Scene
London’s hippest schoolkids (average age: 13) are already on the road to stardom. At least, nominal stardom – having rocked the recent Truck festival, home from home for the serious indie-watcher. With support slots for Bloc Party already under Lo-Fi’s snakebelts, the management and label heavyweights are circling. Let’s just hope they don’t ‘do a Menswear’.

Tawiah
So far, 21-year-old future soul star Tawiah is best known as a super-sessioneer, most notably singing live with Mark Ronson on his recent ‘Versions’ tour. But it’s her work as a solo artiste that’s generating the most excitement – her cut ‘Watch Out’ was one of the highlights of Gilles Peterson’s ‘Brownswood Bubblers 2’ comp this summer. Her debut solo EP is being put together as we speak. Time Out has had a sneak ear-peek, and it’s set to be a mainstay of open car windows by Valentine’s.

Sport
Stefan Bailey
The 19-year-old Queens Park Rangers midfielder was spotted playing in the Middlesex County League for Willesden Constantine and was signed by Rangers as a scholar in 2004. He turned pro a year later.

Shaun Thompson
Thompson (20) is a Bracknell Bees and GB ice hockey player who began at his local Slough club and is now a key forward in the English Premier League. He was top scorer in last year’s World Under-20 Championships.

Samantha Ward
Surrey and GB player Ward (18) took up badminton at junior school and first represented her country at the age of 13. She won bronze at the European Junior Championships.

Theatre
Obi Abili
Left RADA in 2006 and was last seen in ‘Angels in America’ in which, according to us, he was ‘implacably funny’. He can be seen in ‘The Brothers Size’ at the Young Vic in November.

Fiona Button
Went straight from the Webber Douglas to the West End in 2006 to play the daughter in Trevor Nunn’s production of Tom Stoppard’s ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’. She is currently filming ‘The Palace’ for Company Pictures TV.

Charity Wakefield
Left the Oxford School of Drama in 2003 and was spotted in the 24-hour plays at the Old Vic. She has just finished playing Marianne in the BBC’s new ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and the title role of ‘Rapunzel’ for Hat Trick.