Arts

By Verity Healey There’s a buzz in the air at Stratford Circus Arts Centre. No wonder, this is the 10th anniversary of Collabo, Tony Adigun’s annual dance celebration founded in 2006 to promote new collaborations and hip-hop hybrids from dance groups. Friday’s program of short portfolios opens with 10 (UnTitled Dance Company) choreographed by Lukas McFarlane lasting fifteen minutes (no mean feat in the hip-hop world) and featuring 10 tracks and illustrating some super synchronised steps and gyros executed with...

Commuters in the Barnes area have been left baffled by a white bunny dressed in patchwork clothing waving to oncoming traffic. The mysterious giant white rabbit stands on a bridge at the start of every month to wave at passing motorists, and according to our sources is intended to bring people joy and luck. Dressed in a colourful waistcoat and scarf, the rabbit is a project by a performance artist called Spike Mclarrity who started popping up at Barnes bridge in...

An anti-selfie exhibition is set to run in London next week with the aim of bringing portraiture into the 21st century. The pop-up show highlights the emptiness of our social media personas through revealing portraits which show their subjects’ flaws – and what it is to be human. Dellasposa, a new London-based gallery, will host Face | Time which looks to bring to light the relevance of portraiture today through contemporary paintings which offer sincere portrayals of people – unlike our manufactured identities...

London SketchFest returns for its fourth annual festival on 5th & 6th November 2016 at Hackney House in Shoreditch. The festival showcases the best up-and-coming comedy talent and is becoming the biggest alternative comedy festival for launching new and emerging comedians. We caught up with the organisers for a chat. Can you tell me more about SketchFest and how it came about? Sketch comedy has a long history in Britain, from Monty Python to The League of Gentleman but for...

Olivier nominated actress and west end star of Kinky Boots Amy Lennox will play the lead role ‘Elly’ in the new Bowie’s Lazarus show at King’s Cross Theatre. Can you give us any details on what to expect for David Bowie’s Lazarus theatre show? It’s loosely based on the sci-fi novel “The man who fell to Earth” by Walter Tevis- a kind of sequel. It’s difficult to describe in a nutshell (you’ll know exactly what I mean when you see...

A journey – An amazing journey that started with a brief conversation outside a café in Enfield, North London. A journey that’s taken me on Rideouts, to club meetings and social events, and led to meet-ups with Mods all over the country. And a photographic journey that, as one Mod once said to me, “spread the love” about modern-day Mods. An education – I’ve always loved Mod culture. The style, the music, the lights and mirrors on the Vespas and...

If there's one thing that TLE learned from our experience at the London Tattoo Con this year it's that our ink game is weak. Over the course of the weekend thousands of tattoo fans descended on the Tobaccoo Dock in Wapping to take in the latest and greatest in tattoo culture and show off some serious pieces. The art on display this year - from over 400 esteemed tattoo artists and studios from around the world - was absolutely mind bending; a...

With more than 900 of them littered around houses in London, the blue plaque has become a focal part of our historical streets commemorating celebrities, politicians and nobility. The scheme, started by the Royal Society of Arts and administered by English Heritage since The Greater London Council (GLC) was abolished, has been running since the 19th century with Napoleon III's plaque, which was installed in 1867, still there today. This week a blue plaque marking the first home of Freddie Mercury...

By Nicky Goulder, Co-Founder & Chief Executive, www.createarts.org.uk A new academic year is always a time of excitement, new hope and fresh starts. This year, the first after DCMS celebrated the huge contribution the creative industries make to the UK, you’d expect to see arts departments in schools and universities across the country bounding to work to be greeted by rows upon rows of students on their way to continuing this economic and social success. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Instead,...