The Time Out London blog team

January is a famously dreary month of the year. The Christmas magic has worn off, everyone is swearing off anything fun and the days are dark and cold. In short, exactly when we could all do with an extra injection of light. And for the past decade, Canary Wharf has been providing just that.  At the start of each year, the Winter Lights festival sets out to help you beat the January blues and transforms the financial district into a kaleidoscopic outdoor gallery of light art. Now, we can reveal that it’ll be returning on January 20, 2026. The lights are completely free to see and will switch on every evening from 5pm to 10pm until January 31. For 2026, the festival’s theme is ‘Dreamscape’, which promises an ‘an exploratory journey of the surreal and ethereal’.  Expect interactive displays, colourful projections and magnificent installations from world-renowned light artists, as well as pop-up food stalls to keep you fuelled along the way.  Photograph: Canary Wharf Group Pippa Dale, an associate director at the Canary Wharf Group said: ‘Winter Lights started as a glowing idea to brighten the dark January nights and bring joy through art to Londoners. Over the past decade, this idea has grown and brightened into one of the capital's most ambitious light art festivals, with this year's Dreamscape theme representing our boldest vision yet.’  Last year, the installations included a piece that reflected sunlight during the day and became a dazzling choreographed light show by...

Did you know that Barking and Dagenham (B&D) is home to some seriously cool historic attractions? And we’re not just talking about the former Ford factory.  The borough in London’s far east has got the ancient Barking Abbey, a monastery dating back to the seventh century that’s now a scheduled ancient monument. Then there’s Eastbury Manor House, a gorgeous Grade I–listed Elizabethan gentry house that’s now owned by the National Trust. And Dagenham is also home to Valence House Museum, a Grade II*–listed manor house with a medieval moat.  This is why the east London borough has been chosen to receive a £200 million investment from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which hopes to unlock the potential of B&D’s heritage, history and attractions. It is the only London borough to be selected as a ‘Heritage Place’ by the charity.  As well as the historical buildings, B&D has connections to pioneering women’s rights advocates including Mary Wollstonecraft, suffragette Annie Huggett, and the Ford Women’s Strikers of 1968, whose campaign ultimately led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970. Plus, the area is known for the post-WWI Becontree Estate, which was once the world’s largest council estate.  The London neighbourhood is one of six new locations in the UK to become part of the Heritage Places initiative. Also receiving National Lottery funding will be Belfast Historic Waterfront, Dudley, Orkney Islands, Tameside and Ynys Môn on the Isle of Anglesey.  Stuart McLeod, director of...

The Stirling Prize, handed out every year by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), is one of the most prestigious architecture awards out there. Each year, extraordinary new buildings across the UK, from skyscrapers to social housing, are pitted against one another as RIBA judges decide which one has made the most ‘significant contribution to the evolution of the built environment’. Now, the 2025 winner has been revealed.  In a ceremony at the Roundhouse last night (October 16), RIBA’s Stirling Prize for the best new building in Britain went to Appleby Blue Almshouse in Bermondsey – a housing complex built to combat loneliness and provide affordable homes for over-65s.  The almhouse, built on the site of a disused care home, was designed by Witherford Watson Mann for United St Saviour’s Charity, a local organisation that has been addressing social needs in the community for almost 500 years. It’s made up of 59 flats spread across five floors and communal facilities including a roof garden, courtyard, civic room and community kitchen.  Photograph: Philip Vila Appleby Blue follows last year’s unlikely winner, the Elizabeth line. Judges described the building as ‘a provision of pure delight’ and praised it for setting ‘an ambitious standard for social housing among older people’.  Ingrid Schroder, director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture and jury chair, said: ‘This project is a clarion call for a new form of housing at a pivotal moment....