Things to do in London this week

Confused by Super Saturday? To help you get back out there and support your favourite venues and institutions (or just to get that much-needed haircut!), click through to find a list of exactly what is opening up in London from so-called ‘Super Saturday’ onwards. Not ready to venture out of the house? (That’s totally understandable, tbh!) Check out our Time In section, which is filled with great ways to bring some London culture into your home.

The National Gallery will be the first of the major London galleries to open its doors, on Wednesday July 8. The five-star blockbuster exhibition ‘Titian: Love, Desire Death’, which closed with the gallery in March, has been extended until January 2021. Masks are recommended and though entry remains free, bookings must be made in advance. It will also be adopting a one-way system, but with a choose-your-own-adventure twist: there will be three routes which take 25-35 minutes each. Pick your path here. 

Taking place between Thursday July 9 and Friday July 10, Experience:LDN is a virtual festival helping Londoners connect with the capital’s small businesses. It will all be streamed on Time Out London’s Instagram and showcase independent POC-, female- and LGBTQ+-owned small businesses that have lifted their communities during the last few months. Expect takeovers from some of our favourite indy businesses, including a bacon naan cooking demo from Dishoom founder Kavi Thakrar and a HiiT dance class from At Your Beat. Get the full line-up here. 

Ready to fully submerge yourself in nature after all those months of not really leaving the house? Get yourself down to Kew Gardens, which reopened last month, for a mega flora overload. The world-famous Royal Botanic Gardens has been given the go-ahead by the government to welcome visitors. Of course, it will be operating under strict social-distancing guidelines, though. The biggest change? All visitors, including members, will have to book tickets online for time slots and show proof of the slot on arrival. This is the first time Kew has insisted on this in its history.

Use your cash strategically to support grassroots protest, legal aid, consciousness-raising and the distribution of funds to those who need it most with out (by no means exhaustive) list of organisations that you can help fund right now.  

A dozen central London galleries are now open to visitors, but you may need to book an appointment to get in. You can now visit Gazelli Art House, all the Gagosian galleries (Grosvenor Hill, Britannia Street and Davies Street), David Zwirner, Goodman Gallery, White Cube Mason’s Yard and West End, Stephen Friedman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth and Pace Gallery. Be smart about it and book a string of appointments for your own personal gallery tour. 

The V&A’s ‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ was one of the first exhibitions in Europe to delve into the sartorial and social significance of the kimono, exploring its traditional roots from the 1660s in Japan to the garment’s recent reinvention in Japanese street culture. The museum has now released a series of five films made just before the country went into lockdown that will let anyone who didn’t manage to catch the show get an intimate 30-minute behind-the-scenes tour of the show, led by curator Anna Jackson.

Your regular exercise routine probably went out the window on day one of working from home, didn’t it? Never fear! London cabaret star Dolly Trolley is here to help you burn off all those extra calories you’re stress-eating with a drag aerobics class live-streamed on Instagram and Facebook Live every Wednesday at 7.30pm straight from Dolly’s living room. It’s free, but you can chuck her a few quid on PayPal for the effort! Go on, be generous: those squats don’t come for free. 

‘Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi’ at Somerset House closed in March, but you can view the exhibition virtually. Browse John Cage’s mushroom notebooks, Beatrix Potter’s botanical illustrations and Carsten Höller’s suitcase of spinning, solar-powered fungi. To access the exhibition, download the Google Arts & Culture app, search the show’s title, and you’ll be able to project the mushrooms right into your living room. 

If you’d usually be spending your Friday nights requesting the new Lady Gaga at an east London gay bar, then this is the live stream for you. Resident Queer House Party DJs Harry Gay, Wacha, and Passer will be bringing you queer bops, throwback pop, house bangers and techno clangers, streamed right into your living room every Friday night. It’s free, but PayPal donations are encouraged – it’s a pretty tough time to be a DJ!

The pub might be off limits for the time being, but plenty of London’s best bars have launched delivery services to keep you in bougie booze during social isolation. Treat yourself to a lovely bottle of English rosé from Renegade London Wines, order a crafty crate of £2 cans from Deptford brewery Villages, or, if the world really is ending, splash out on a bottle of London’s best Margarita from Dalston bar Hacha.

Use the quarantine downtime to perfect your downward dog, with the help of London’s best yoga studios. Check out free virtual classes on Covent Garden studio Another Space’s social accounts, learn the basics on MoreYoga’s YouTube channel for nothing, or do a full-length class with Hackney social enterprise Supply Yoga, boutique Hornsey studio One Yoga or compact Tufnell park practice Down to Earth, who are all streaming their usual schedule of classes online starting at £5 per go. Nama-stay indoors!

With supermarkets running low on loaves, isolation might be the perfect time to brush up on your home baking skills. Fortunately, Borough Market bakery Bread Ahead is here to help. It’ll be running baking tutorials on Instagram Live every afternoon, teaching you how to make treats like chocolate brownies and hot cross buns. Tune in at 2pm to bake along, or catch each class on Insta for 24 hours afterwards.