Free things to do in London this week

The first museum exhibition dedicated to artist Audrey Amiss brings together drawings, paintings and other exhibition materials to explore the life and work of Amiss who died in 2013. Committed to psychiatric hospitals several times throughout her life, Amiss used her art to advocate for people who were mistreated by the mental health system. The Surviving Exhibitions focuses on works that records suggest Amiss exhibited or intended to make public. 

Since its inaugural edition in 1980, this long-standing portaiture competition has attracted more than 40,000 entries from over 100 countries and has been seen by more than six million people. The highly competitive award showcases the best of contemporary portrait painters, whose styles range from the abstract to the classic. Last year the top prize was awarded to British painter Moira Cameron for her non-naturalistic self-portrait, ‘A Life Lived’, which depicts the painter slumped in an armchair in vivid colours.   

There’s a painting that hangs in the Pre-Raphaelite room of Tate Britain that Freddy Mercury used to drag his Queen bandmates to see time and again. It’s a fantastical scene from Romeo and Juliet alive with fairies and mythical creatures, including the legendary fairy Queen Mab, who rushes through the night planting dreams in people’s heads. Mercury was so captivated by it that he wrote and named a song after it: ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’. The painting is the work of the often overlooked Victorian artist named Richard Dadd. The Royal Academy has reunited it with dozens of his other works in Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam, the first major exhibition devoted to the artist in more than 50 years. Dadd spent nearly a decade completing ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’ while confined to Bethlem Hospital—better known as Bedlam—after killing his father in a severe psychotic episode. In 1864, he was transferred to the newly opened Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where he remained until his death in 1886. The exhibition, however, doesn’t begin there. Instead, it returns to Dadd’s days as a student at the Royal Academy Schools, just across from where this exhibition hangs today. While there, he became a founding member of one of Britain’s OG artistic cliques (named the ‘Clique’). Formed by a group of fellow students, its members drew inspiration from Shakespeare and Byron, dressing one another as literary and historical figures to practise their painting. Several of these...

Battersea Power Station already has an indoor chimney lift experience, a huge food court, a lovely cinema and more high street faves than you can hope to get round in a weekend-long shopping spree. Now it’s adding a free summer funfair to its entertainment offering Electric Summer opens in Power Station Park and along the Coaling Jetty from 29 July, and it’s an entire seaside town’s worth of things crammed onto a Thames-side patch of concrete.  The centrepiece is a full roller rink with sessions ranging from wobbly first-timers to Thursday date nights and Saturday silent discos, plus roller fitness classes if you fancy your cardio with a side of nostalgia. Out on the jetty, pétanque courts turn the riverside into a passable stand-in for the south of France, river views included. There's also a big wheel for skyline views, dodgems, a wave swinger and boardwalk games including Lobster Pot and Blockbuster. We aren’t too sure what either involves, but we’re very intrigued. The Boardwalk Bar’s rooftop terrace is also the obvious spot for an after-work pint with a view. Getting in is free. You only pay if you want to skate or spin around on something.

Donald Locke shows don’t come around often. But like proverbial buses, you wait for ages, and then three arrive at once, in the form of this touring exhibition moving from Birmingham to Bristol and now Camden Art Centre in London.  It’s not the first time the late Guyanese-British artist has shown here, though you’d be forgiven for missing it. Back in 1970, Locke exhibited ceramics under the pseudonym Issorosano Ite. He arrived in the UK from Guyana in his mid-twenties to study ceramics in Bath and Edinburgh, even though painting was his initial obsession. ‘With the arrogance of youth, I was going to be the greatest painter in the world,’ he said of his early ambition. Well, he did both, yet what he made doesn’t sit neatly within a single camp. Rather, his practices – spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, and ceramics – would morph into one another. While the forms may appear a little abstract, the thinking behind them is not Take ‘Trophies of Empire’ (1972–74), one of his most iconic works and included in Resistant Forms. An open cabinet of 27 pigeonholes houses dark, cylindrical ceramic forms (bullets, we come to understand) cradled within trophy cups, spurs, and leather cuffs, sourced by Locke from Portobello Market. It’s not the last you’ll see of them. Look at the large, wild, black paintings next door, made a decade or two later while he was living in Phoenix and Atlanta. You’ll spot Queen Victoria, the Warhol-like revolver—now look again: those ‘trophies’ reappear...

The Tate Modern began keeping its galleries open until 9pm every Friday and Saturday back in September. Its been taking full advantage of those extra hours ever since, hosting free live music performances at its Corner Bar. This Friday,  it’s collaborating with King’s Cross-based community station Voices Radio for an evening of improv jazz. A roster of London jazz scene heavyweights will meet on stage for the first time and break out in unrehearsed, live improvised jazz. That’s right, they’ll be making it all up right on the spot. There’ll also be vinyl DJ sets in between sets, a bunch of boardgames to play for free and a curated selection of natural wines from the Tate’s cellar. It’s worth knowing that this isn’t a one-off free event. Natural Jazz is now taking place at Corners every first Friday of the month. 

Nothing sparks creativity like a good zine fair. And Lewisham-based printers and publishers PageMasters puts on some of the best in the city. For it’s market this weekend, the organisation has curated a killer line-up of 40 small presses and publishers including the likes of Camp! Boooks and Prints, Sticky Fingers Publishing, Strike Design Studio, Montez Press and The Slow Grind, all of which will be peddling their wares at the Sputh London Gallery. DJs from East Anglia Records will be providing a soundbed as you browse a huge range of zines, and there’s a paid workshop with zine-making club Artizine on the Saturday for anyone who wants to learn some tips and tricks on how to make their own. 

The UK’s largest beer hall might not sound like an obvious choice for a kid-friendly day out, but Big Penny Social promises plenty of ways to keep the whole crew entertained at its Family Summer Festival this bank holiday. Visitors of all ages are invited to take part in a community rug-making workshop, take part in a family pub quiz, or challenge one another to some friendly competion at on-site gaming hall Flukes’ family sessions. There’ll also be a local indie makers’ market, Ghanaian street food and live DJs, plus opportunities to soak up some rays on the sand at the venue’s summertime pop-up, the Big Penny Beach Club. And yes, parents, the beer will be free-flowing too.     

Every year, London’s famous river gets a whole festival of art installations, performances, and talks devoted to her watery charms, many of which are free to check out. This year’s Totally Thames Festival has scores of events throughout September, all dotted along riverside locations from Richmond to Barking & Dagenham. This year, look out for The Waterfront Journals, (Sep 6), a promenade performance of New York City artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz’s monologues, Turning the Tide (Sep 17-20), a site-specific film installation by Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass projected onto the columns of the disused Blackfriars Railway Bridge and Where the River Holds Us (Sep 27-28), a site-responsive opera on Victoria Embankment. There’ll also be a dance performance from ex-Rambert dancers in the atmospheric Brunel Museum Tunnel Shaft (Sep 24) and recitals aboard Victorian steamship the SS Robin (Sep 26). Old favourites will also be making an appearance, including the Great River Race (Sep 12) from Tower Hamlets to Richmond – where 330 crews from across the world spending the morning speeding down the Thames on wooden rowboats, many of them in fancy dress costumes – and the St Katharine Docks Classic Boat Festival (Sep 12-13), where visitors can clamber aboard more than 50 historic vessels. You can also join a river exploration session as part of Mudlarking Weekend (Sep 5-6), take part in paddlesports sessions and a fishing competition as part of Tidefest (Sep 6)...

This community festival is back, taking over unusual local indoor and outdoor venues across south east London to screen feature films for kids and adults, artists' film and video and archive footage. This year’s highlights include a screening and film quiz at The Man of Kent (Sep 8), a spooky screening of The Blair Witch Project in Nunhead Cemetery (Sep 5), a short film night at Peckham Plex (Sep 5), and a finale screening of standout 2025 film Sinners at LEX2 Livesey Exchange (Sep 13). Look out also for showings of Blue Velvet, Paddington 2, Moonlight, Human Traffic, Burning an Illusion, and Labyrinth at weird and wonderful venues.