Free things to do in London this weekend

London’s spectacular free outdoor Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is back for 2025, taking place over three consecutive weekends starting with the August bank holiday.  Celebrating its 30th edition in 2025, the festival will kick off with Above And Beyond, a breathtaking acrobatic feat that will see eight parkour performers from French company Lézards Bleus traversing landmark buildings around Woolwich accompanied by music from the Greenwich-based Citizens of the World Choir.  The beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24) then returns after skipping last summer, bringing family friendly games and street performance to the heart of the borough, including all-female Belgian circus company Cie Des Chaussons Rouges’s high wire show Epiphytes in Greenwich Park. Greenwich Peninsula will play host to another sub festival, Turning Worlds (Aug 30 and 31), which will feature four collaborations between the world of technology, engineering and performance, including the delightfully named Robopole, a human/robot acrobatic act from German company ULIK.  The final weekend of the festival sees Dutch company Panama Pictures perform The Weight of the Water (Sep 5 and 6), a physical theatre piece on the subject of climate change that will take place of a seesawing platform in the middle of Birchmere Lake in Thamesmead. These are just a few highlights in a packed programme, with plenty more events to be announced in due course too. As always, everything at GDIF is free to attend,...

‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. It’s a perpetually instructive aphorism that artists have repeatedly returned to. Francisco Goya used it to name one of his most well-known etchings from the late 18th century, depicting a character whose head rests on a desk, surrounded by shadowy creatures. Centuries later, in 2008, British artist Yinka Shonibare borrowed the image and title for another body of work. And now, the Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani’s new commission for Somerset House takes the ongoing sleep of reason as its starting point. In the grand Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, she has installed a ten-metre-tall blue figure, who lays supine, gently breathing with closed eyes. We’re told that this ethereal, childlike giant has slept through ‘warnings of present and imminent catastrophes, political and social disaster and environmental collapse.’ Watching its stomach peacefully rising and falling, it’s easy to believe that ignorance is bliss.  Here is a deft balance of content and form Encased in an illuminated casket-like glass box, the figure – the dreamer – is clothed in white lace and mesh. Visitors are invited to step onto its plinth for a closer look at the beautiful hand- painted sculpture, which is both imposing and delicate. On one end, its feet are each the size of a toddler; on the other, flushed cheeks and pink lips give the impression of a fairy tale princess. The Sleeping Beauty parallel is emphasised by an otherworldly, subtly swelling...

In the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space, two Iranian-Canadian artists are having fun with language. Sculpture, video and found objects all find their place in this playful exhibition that juxtaposes words and images to show us the precarity of truth and meaning in today’s world. From a hyper-realistic sculpture to a repurposed electric motorway sign, Ghazaleh Avarzamani and Ali Ahadi find many ways to combine the quotidian with the uncanny.

During the big men’s sports tournaments, you can count on practically every pub in the city to broadcast matches and fill up with fans. When it comes to the upcoming Women’s Rugby World Cup, though, public places fans can gather at to watch matches remain relatively few and far between. But this year, there is at least one place where you’re guaranteed to catch every single game: the brand new Asahi Open Arms. The fan-focused pub, backed by Women’s World Rugby Player of the Year Ellie Kildunne, is taking residency at The Queen’s Head in Shoreditch for the duration of the tournament. Besides the live screenings, it promises to host grassroots events, like Q&As and exclusive launches. A full programme is on its way soon.

Part of an ongoing exhibition series of group exhibitions featuring artists not represented by the gallery, this show will see three painters – Koak, Ding Shilun and Cece Philips – fill Hauser & Wirth’s vast Savile Row space with windows into imagined interiors. All taking domestic architectures as their starting point, each artist’s work becomes a meditation on the psychology of space.