To have a free day out is to beat the system. It’s the cultural equivalent of gorging yourself at an all-you-can-eat buffet, except it costs much less and you won’t go to bed praying for death because you consumed enough lukewarm spring rolls to murder an ox. Picking free entertainment is a learned skill, however. Opt for something too mainstream and your enjoyment will be dented by swarms of other people. Pick something not mainstream enough – say, the time I went to the opening of a ferry on the Isle of Sheppey as a teenager – and there’s a good chance you’ll spend your day bored, cold and eating cheese-and-pineapple cocktail sticks in a windowless indoor car park that stinks of exhaust fumes.
When it is just right, however, free stuff can expand your horizons like nothing else. Let’s imagine that you’re on the fence about, say, jazz. The expectations that come with a financial transaction are far too high to risk a full afternoon of potentially directionless skronk. But if it’s free, like the Barbican’s Women in Jazz will be in October, you have nothing to lose.
This guide is nothing but potential reward. Go to a free gig and you might discover a new favourite band. Go to a free art exhibition and you might discover a new favourite artist. New comedians. Weird buildings. If you hate going out, we’ve even got a bit about free apps, so you can better yourself for free from the comfort of your own toilet.
Stuart Heritage
Stage
Playing the Fool
As part of the BFI’s Comedy Genius season there’ll be a lol-tastic free exhibit in the BFI Southbank’s mezzanine dedicated to the female pioneers of film comedy and slapstick. Focusing on the 1920s and 30s, the work of the divine Clara Bow is front and centre and the BFI has dug deep into its archive for artefacts and photos that shine a light on mime and vaudeville’s most daring dames.
BFI Southbank, SE1, 26 October to 6 January
Sheffield Theatres
Are you a drama student in Sheffield? Well don’t worry, you’re not totally screwed. Sheffield Theatres offers free tickets for anyone studying performing arts at schools and colleges in the local area. Alongside the Ignite scheme, there are also £5 tickets for 16 to 26-year-olds. Upcoming productions include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. Brush up your Shakespeare for both.
Sheffield
Fringe! Queer Film Fest
A celebration of queer film, half of the events at this annual LGBTIQA+ friendly week are free to attend. Running since 2011, Fringe! will be popping up in cinemas, galleries, bars and clubs across east London with a cutting edge and super-inclusionary outlook. Last year featured masterclasses from Emmy-nominated directors, dance parties celebrating the power of Whitney, and screenings of everything from DIY queer-feminist post-porn sci-fi video projects to Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion.
Various venues, east London, 13 October to 18 November
Funny Girls
Not everything is on Netflix, y’know. Pull up a chair and get cosy in one of the BFI’s six Mediatheques and settle down with its new Funny Women collection. Looking through the archive at a century of hilarious women in British entertainment, you can watch rarely screened classics such as The Joyce Grenfell Show and Beryl Reid Says Good Evening or simply get reacquainted with modern greats Sharon Horgan, Meera Syal and Julia Davis.
BFI Mediatheques across the UK
Leicester’s Diwali
The largest Diwali celebrations in the country can be found in Leicester. They’re the biggest outside of India, no less, and on 28 October, 6,000 lights along the city’s Golden Mile will be switched on, alongside a programme of music and dance. Then, two weeks later, the Hindu festival of lights will end with a huge fireworks display and the chance to feast on food from some of the best restaurants in the area.
Leicester, 28 October to 11 November
The Bill Murray
Although the name of the pub gets less funny every time you say it, The Bill Murray is still an excellent place to get your comedy fix. With free shows most evenings, this Kickstarter-funded hotbed of raw alt.lolz is also the kind of place where names such as Sara Pascoe, Simon Amstell and Daniel Kitson regularly dip in to try out new material. Groundhog Yay!
The Bill Murray, N1
Roots, Rhythms & Records: Hackney Black Women Writers Take the Mic …
Formed at the start of the year, this group’s first public performance of work will take place in October. Featuring pieces written in response to Hackney Museum’s Roots, Rhythms & Rhymes exhibition, revealing the sounds and stories of African and Caribbean music in Hackney, it’s the perfect opportunity to not just support community arts but hear some fresh talent, too.
Hackney Museum, E8, 18 October
Ted Hughes festival
A problematic fave he might be, but poet Ted Hughes still keeps the crowds swarming to West Yorkshire to pay homage 20 years after his death. Although you’ll have to stump up £15 to see Simon Armitage and Frieda Hughes reading his work, there are plenty of free events here, including guided tours of Hughes’s birthplace in Mytholmroyd and talks by poet Yvonne Reddick and illustrator Laura Carlin, who have both recently contributed to books of or about Hughes’s work and legacy.
Various venues, Hebden Bridge, 19 to 21 October
National Poetry Day Live
With a theme of “change” and a selection of radical writers on hand, the Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Day Live event will be as far from a Pam Ayres retrospective as it’s possible to get. Anthony Anaxagorou, Hannah Lowe, Caroline Bird and Zaffar Kunial will all grace the newly reopened Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer with their worthy words.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Thursday 4 October
Africa on the Square
The fourth annual Africa on the Square, this celebration of African arts and culture is fast becoming a staple in the London cultural calendar. Get your fill of jollof rice, check out the African market and the roaming entertainment, and sample the community showcases and participatory kids’ activities at an event that started as a spin-off of Black History Month but has now taken on a life of its own.
Trafalgar Square, WC2, 27 October
Music
Swimming Girls
Bristol’s Swimming Girls do that 1975-y, Pale Waves-y, Fickle Friends-y big 1980s guitar pop-influenced thing – and do it well. Perky tunes so big you could hang a rain-soaked woollen duffle coat on them, songs such as Back of Your Car and Asking for It will make you think of unfairly attractive teenagers running to jump into the arms of other unfairly attractive teenagers in a John Hughes movie. They met at uni in Bath, so this gig is something of a homecoming.
The Nest, Bath, 20 October
Dalston Superstore
Although you’ll have to stump up for Friday and Saturday club nights, most other evenings at the Superstore are free. Sunday’s self-styled “queer disco paradise” Last Resort follows on neatly from Disco Brunch, while there is more disco in Disco Spritz on Tuesday and mutant pop on Wednesdays at Uncontrollable Urge. It’s open until 2.30am on weekdays; handy if you hate your job and need to be half-drunk to get through the day.
Kingsland High Street, E8
Tess Roby
Into icy synthpop and worship at the twin temples of Nico and Kate Bush? Then Montreal’s Tess Roby is the Toronto-raised singer-songwriter for you. A member of the Canadian Children’s Opera Company for almost a decade – presumably having to leave when she was no longer an actual child – her accomplished vocals are the real star here. If that doesn’t swing it, then you might be into the fact that year’s languid Given Signs sounds a bit like Foals at their dreamiest.
Shacklewell Arms, E8, Monday 1 October
Didirri
Didirri has an acoustic guitar and he is not afraid to use it. But don’t let that put you off. He’s come all the way from Australia to entertain you with heartfelt Spotify-folk songs such as Jude. He’s also got some lovely long hair and one of those gruff but soft voices that makes you feel a little bit funny inside despite the fact that you’re 34, have at least three River Cottage cookery books and should know better by now.
Rough Trade, Bristol, 7 October
Paul Cherry
Things we like about Chicago solo artist Paul Cherry: the highly groovy Steely Dan-esque artwork for this year’s Flavour album. His fruity name. His sweet spectacles. The fact he’s taken the current vogue for jazz and whipped up a weirdo Chet Baker-goes-yacht rock take on proceedings that incorporates some squelchy psych meanderings into the mellow mix. And the fact that he plays free shows, of course.
The Richmond, Brighton, 19 October
Bambara
It’s fair to say that Bambara quite like Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. They’re definitely partial to a bit of Protomartyr, too, and it wouldn’t surprise us if they also put the Gun Club and the Cramps on every single tour bus playlist they make. They definitely only ever wear black. It seems like squealing, doomy psychobilly is coming back in vogue – finally, right? – and Bambara are heading the charge. Fun fact: like REM, they’re from Athens, Georgia. Another fun fact: two of the trio are twins.
Shacklewell Arms, E8, 26 October
Philharmonia Chamber Players: Strauss’s Metamorphosen
The Southbank Centre’s classical season offers you two performances for the price of none featuring a gang of cellos tackling 18th-century Italian composer Boccherini’s String Quintet in A Minor Op 51 No 2 as well as a string septet playing the original arrangement for Richard Strauss’s elegiac Metamorphosen, which was written towards the end of the second world war and is appropriately gloomy.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, 1 November
Her Fest
A one-day, woman-centric, alt-rock, indie pop, post-punk, party pop event, the first 100 tickets for Her Fest are totally free. Which is a pretty good deal considering the decent likes of She Drew the Gun, No Fixed Identity and Dead Naked Hippies are all playing, and loads more too. Doors are at 1pm if you want to rock up early and get your fill of on-the-house live music.
Picture House Social, Sheffield, 3 November
Only Girl
Ellen Murphy, AKA south London soul singer – yes, another one – Only Girl, has been doing that 90s-inspired thing for a few years now, nailing the distinct sound of longing and lushness in the process. If you like having a couple of glasses of Pinot grigio while humming along to Jessie Ware and looking at your university ex’s wedding photos online, this has got you written all over it.
Patterns, Brighton, 8 November
Kit Downes
Rather than spending another lunchbreak glumly wandering around Pret and avoiding eye contact with your colleagues as you both reach for the last tuna baguette, hit up the Royal Festival Hall for some free jazz. Freeform pianist Kit Downes will be getting all experimental on the organ during this 60-minute concert. Nice.
Royal Festival Hall, SE1, 23 November
Exhibitions & Museums
The Enchanted Garden
Wander around the pre-Raphaelite don William Morris’s childhood home and check out some exquisite exhibitions. This one looks at how Morris and his crew of redhead-loving aesthetes – plus generations to come – responded to the concept of the garden. Open Wednesday to Sunday, it features work by Monet, Pissarro, Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer, Beatrix Potter, Edmund Blair Leighton, Vanessa Bell and others.
William Morris Gallery, E17, 20 October to 27 January
William Kentridge: Thick Time
South African artist Kentridge’s touring exhibition features his recent-ish large-scale film installations O Sentimental Machine and The Refusal of Time. Big and bold, they were created alongside physicist Peter Galison, and make string theory and time-keeping technology look dramatic.
The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, to 3 March
Jameel Prize 5
An international award for modern art and design inspired by Islamic tradition, the Jameel Prize features eight different artists and this year covers a broad sweep of disciplines, with fashion designers, painters and multimedia artists all represented. This year, the £25,000 prize has been shared by two finalists for the first time: artist Mehdi Moutashar and architect Marina Tabassum.
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7, to 25 November
V&A Dundee
The new V&A Dundee is Scotland’s first dedicated design museum, celebrating local heroes and bringing major shows to the city. Three hundred old and new objects form the bulk of the collection, and 2014 Turner prize nominee Ciara Phillips has created a very special piece that doffs its tam o’shanter at the legacy and enduring influence of Scottish design. You can find it on the museum’s upper level.
Riverside Esplanade, Dundee
Women in Jazz
Everyone knows about Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, but the Barbican Centre’s latest delve into the National Jazz Archive brings the stories of lesser-known female jazz acts to light. Via the medium of some very good photos, video, posters, journals and memorabilia, you’ll get to learn about some cool cats indeed.
Barbican Centre: Library, EC2, 16 October to 31 December
Represent! Voices 100 Years On
Crowdsourced and proud of it, Represent! is all about people power – specifically women’s. Taking as its start point the suffragettes, it looks at how women have fought to have their voices heard over the past century. Designed in collaboration with slick feminist mag Riposte, it’s thrillingly up-to-date, with a jumpsuit from Sisters Uncut’s Bafta red-carpet protest plus placards from 2017’s women’s march.
People’s History Museum, Manchester, to 3 February
V&A Photography Centre
October sees the big reveal of phase one of the V&A’s new Photography Centre. It will double the space the museum currently offers for its permanent photography collection; a damn good idea, seeing as it has more than 800,000 objects in its massive archive. A new project tent, “dark space” and digital wall will showcase a tiny proportion of that, with phase two along in 2022.
Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7, opens autumn, free members’ preview, 11 October
The Women’s Hall
Public history project the East End Women’s Museum is behind this fascinating look at Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes. Tower Hamlets Local History Library has been transformed into the group’s old Baptist mission hall headquarters and includes a recreation of their Cost-Price Restaurant, which served refreshments on a pay-what-you-can basis. The 2018 version gets its supplies from the surplus food charity FareShare.
Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, E1, to 20 October
Sean Scully: Inside Outside
Sculptor Sean Scully is bringing some absolute units to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield. In what marks the Irish artist’s biggest ever exhibition in the UK, Scully’s bold and brutal pieces hewn from metal and local stone will be dotted around the park. In addition, the site’s indoor gallery will show Scully’s paintings, which respond to the wonderful Yorkshire landscape.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, nr Wakefield, Sat to 6 Jan; parking charges apply
Diwali at The Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection is free all year round, but the Diwali-evening spesh is really worth hitting up. Curated by a dream team of musician Bishi and crafting queen Momtaz Begum-Hossain, you can join workshops, dance, drink and be merry, as well as checking out the permanent displays in the museum’s collection, where special attention is given to Indian arms and armour.
The Wallace Collection, W1; Lates: A Festival of Lights, 9 November, booking essential
Tech
4:3
Boiler Room – yes, they of the videos of DJs wiggling their hips on sweaty stages from Tulum to Telford – has also collated one of the best online resources for counter- and pop-cultural documentary film-making. From vintage grime DVD series Risky Roadz to docs about Arthur Russell and Sun Ra, you can also search via curator, with composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, electronic artist Peaches and actual Hobbit Elijah Wood all in the mix.
fourthree.boilerroom.tv
Google Arts and Culture
As well as being able to find the best museums and galleries near you, Google’s Arts and Culture app goes just about deep enough for a short train ride into almost everything arty. From the history of the kimono and the evolution of Korean dance to the life of Frida Kahlo, it’s all here. A museum explorer feature lets you peek at the collections of some of the greatest in the world, but without the excessive carbon footprint that a real-life trip would come with.
Nowness
Who doesn’t like to watch lovely short films about everything from hidden gardens to the global rituals of prayer and the power of skateboarding? A personal fave is the arty tastemakers’ house-porn series My Place, which lets you snoop around the homes of creative scene-shakers such as artist Jake Chapman, model Adwoa Aboah and Crass founder Penny Rimbaud. Nice spider plants, Penny.
DICE
Search for gigs across the UK and beyond using this digital ticketing app that recently gave out a bunch of extremely oversubscribed free tickets to Kanye West’s album launch parties in Chicago, New York and Miami. There’s a dedicated group for free shows; use it wisely and you’ll never have to pay for live music again.
Huji Cam
Wondering how your mates who are slightly cooler than you are posting pics that look as if they were taken in 1998 but we’re in fact snapped during a rudimentary pub roast outing last Sunday? Dancing in the ashes of Hipstamatic – remember that? No? – the Huji Cam app makes everything look as though it’s been shot on a disposable camera and then spent a week in the Boots processing lab, complete with lens flares and dodgy orange glow.
iTunes, Google Play
The Culture Trip
Curated by locals, The Culture Trip app gives you an insider insight into cities across the UK (and further afield, too). Find the best views and country walks in Manchester, the 12 best free things to do in Cardiff and Glasgow and a guide to the many neighbourhoods of Leeds. You can also learn all about how Hastings is the Shoreditch of Sussex and get 18 – 18! – unusual ideas for dates in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Auxy
Becoming a bedroom – or backseat of the bus – producer has never been easier. Auxy is the app that’ll make a Diplo of you yet. A pocket studio that you can actually fit into your pocket, you can make beats, melodies, loops and everything else for a track to give to an ungrateful SoundCloud rapper with a face tattoo and unresolved issues with their dad. Give it two months and a place on Spotify’s Rap Caviar playlist is guaranteed.
Co-Star
Sure, it’s highly likely that it’s all bollocks, but Co-Star is the astrology app that’s got people talking about star signs with as much wide-eyed enthusiasm as in the glory days of Mystic Meg. Using real-time data from Nasa, you can keep track of your pals’ horoscopes as well as your own, and see if the stars have blessed your latest Hinge hook-up.
Detour
Score a free guided stroll around London on this global walking tour app. Rather than going for the obvious, Detour takes you on the paths less travelled: Brixton’s Caribbean cultural heritage, the West End’s suffragette story, pirates and pubs in Wapping, spies in Mayfair, radical dissent in Clerkenwell, murder in Deptford, and the great hipster settlement of Hackney Wick are all on offer.
PlantNet
Ever ambled around a park or the garden of a friend who has their shit together and thought: “Gosh, that’s a lovely flower – what the hell is it?” Plantnet can identify different species of plants from one simple photo, thus saving you from embarrassing yourself in the garden centre babbling on about a thing with spiky leaves and a flower that looks like a lily but isn’t a lily. Or is it a lily? Meh.
Landmarks
Glasgow Necropolis
Home to 50,000 residents, Glasgow’s imposing Victorian resting place is one of the most jaw-dropping cemeteries in the UK. On top of a hill, it’s based on Paris’s Père Lachaise and is a rambling, verdant thing, given its distinct personality thanks to being designed by a landscape gardener rather than an architect. Not just for goths, a walk in the Necropolis offers you the chance to get back to nature while contemplating your mortality.
Castle Street
Lewes bonfire celebrations
The locals do not want you to come to Lewes on 5 November. They will do everything they possibly can to stop you from coming. You’ll need to be in a special bonfire society and have a password to get into certain pubs. They’ll stop all the trains. There will be literally no taxis. But under no circumstances let this put you off from one of the greatest nights in the British pyromaniacs calendar.
Lewes, 5 November
Hardcastle Crags
Hardcastle Crags isn’t, as the name might suggest, a 1930s East End boxer, but one of the most delightfully scenic rambling spots in the UK. A lush woodland valley with slight Lord of the Rings vibes, this is the countryside for people who don’t usually like the countryside. AKA me when I went a couple of weeks ago and had a bit of a moment by a babbling brook.
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire
Cardiff Castle
If you live or work in Cardiff you’re allowed to visit the grand, slightly unhinged Cardiff Castle for free. Camper than a full weekend of back-to-back episodes of Drag Race, it’s the gothic revival revamp the building got in the Victorian era that’s really worth checking out. It’s essentially a massive Ferrero Rocher, with gold everywhere, fabulous frescos and some seriously plush places to smoke opium.
Cardiff city centre
The Palladium
One of the most spectacular ’Spoons in the UK is Llandudno’s Palladium, a grand old Edwardian music hall that the pub chain kept largely intact. Wandering around is free but, unlike Club Tropicana, the drinks aren’t. However, sit yourself at a table and put the number on Twitter and hopefully some kind people with the Wetherspoons app will take pity on you and send a jug of Woo Woo in your direction.
Gloddaeth Street, Llandudno
Derry Halloween Parade
America does Halloween right, treating it like Christmas for goths, with costumes, trick-or-treat mayhem and a full month of dedicated horror-film programming on telly. We’re yet to fully catch on to pumpkin season in the UK but Derry is doing its best, with a parade to rival West Hollywood’s and Manhattan’s annual gathering of ghouls. Around 1,000 performers will be scaring the living daylights out of the crowd.
City Centre, Derry, 31 October
Turner Prize Quiz Night
To celebrate the Turner prize’s arrival in Margate in 2019, the town’s biggest gallery will be hosting a free quiz for people who work for local transport companies. Attendees will get a free burger and beer and be able to quiz Turner reps about what next year’s plans will mean for them, as well as have a poke around the gallery. Fingers crossed for more giant buttocks to stroll under in the name of art.
Turner Contemporary, Margate, 14 Nov
The Spice Girls steps
You don’t need to be a resident of the swanky St Pancras Renaissance Hotel to sweep through the foyer and head straight towards the double staircase made famous by Ginger, Scary, Sporty, Baby and Posh in the iconic video for Wannabe. A grand and gothic thing of extreme beauty, it’s best appreciated with four mates and a synchronised dance routine.
St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, NW1
Durham ghost walk
Gather round the campfire and let us tell the tale of Durham Paranormal Research Group, who formed in 2002 to investigate local poltergeist activity. They’re still going strong and Dave, who is the group’s only original member, leads a free ghost walk around town. You’ll see some lovely spooky old sites and also get to test your own psychic ability. But you probably already knew that. Market Place, Durham, first Sunday of every month, 8pm
Shell huts
Margate’s Shell Grotto may be the discerning day-tripper’s selfie spot of choice, but if you don’t want to drop £4 to enter Captain Birdseye’s sex dungeon then a trip to London is in order. Just across from Victoria station, you’ll find two 1950s-built huts covered in shells. Something for fans of seaside detritus in an urban setting and lovers of endearingly crappy kitsch.
Lower Grosvenor Gardens, SW1
Main composite: Sonja Horsman/The Observer; Kois Miah/GLA; Michael Ochs Archives; Huji Cam; The Estate of Cicely Mary Barker/Frederick Warne & Co; Alex Bonney; Fabrice Leroux; © FourThree
