This is a very east/north week, which is exactly how it should be. The strongest thing is Hackney Art Week: ten days of artist-run exhibitions, workshops, performances, markets and odd little happenings across Dalston, Clapton, London Fields, De Beauvoir, Stoke Newington, Haggerston and Hackney Wick. At Café OTO, two nights mark Tony Oxley’s uncompromising legacy in British free improvisation. Whitechapel’s Senga Nengudi and Veronica Ryan exhibitions close on Sunday. Sadler’s Wells has Rambert’s final nights and a free weekend at its new east London home tracing Black dance-floor histories. For talks, the sweet spot is Monday and Tuesday: Asako Yuzuki at Union Chapel, Jess Phillips on the manosphere at Conway Hall, and Beeban Kidron on Big Tech at The Conduit. Food-wise, keep it tight: one excellent Levan lunch with Les Enfants du Marché rather than a week of random pop-ups.
Dalston, Clapton, London Fields, De Beauvoir, Stoke Newington, Haggerston & Hackney Wick · Until Sun 14 Jun · Many events free
A proper local art sprawl rather than a polite fair: 60 artists and creatives across 50 venues, with exhibitions, markets, workshops, performances, immersive installations, street parties and an art treasure hunt. Venues include Raleigh Chapel, Chats Palace, The Rose Lipman Building, St Augustine’s Tower and ESEACC at The Old Bath House, plus pubs, bakeries and neighbourhood spaces. The appeal is the map itself: pick a cluster around Dalston/Haggerston, wander for two hours, and let the good weird stuff find you.
Café OTO, Dalston · Mon 15 & Tue 16 Jun, 7.30pm · £22 / £18 advance / £15 members
OTO earns its place this week. Confront Recordings and Tutta Oxley present two nights around Tony Oxley, the Sheffield-born drummer/composer whose work helped define European free improvisation: precise, metallic, fiercely unsentimental. Monday is billed as The Angular Apron; Tuesday brings the Celebration Orchestra. If Ben wants one genuinely serious music night this window, this is it: not background jazz, not nostalgia, but a living room for the edges of sound.
Union Chapel, Islington · Mon 15 Jun, 7pm · Intelligence Squared
Butter became one of those word-of-mouth novels everyone seemed to press into someone else’s hands: food, appetite, misogyny, loneliness, obsession, and a journalist circling a convicted killer who cooks. Intelligence Squared brings Asako Yuzuki to Union Chapel, which makes this the rare big literary event that is also a ten-minute local decision. Good date-night shape: talk first, drink on Upper Street after.
Close-Up Cinema, Shoreditch · Fri 12, 8pm & Sun 14, 4.30pm · Check individual tickets
Close-Up’s weekend is almost comically Ben-coded. Friday: Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a wry, tender ghost story about a cavernous old picture palace on its final night. Sunday: Tarkovsky’s 183-minute preferred cut of Andrei Rublev, still one of cinema’s great meditations on art, faith and brutality. Tiny room, serious programming, no multiplex energy. Pick one if you want beauty; pick both if you want to disappear.
The Conduit, Covent Garden · Tue 16 Jun, 6.30pm · How To Academy
Baroness Beeban Kidron, the filmmaker and digital-rights campaigner behind the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code, talks to Misha Glenny about Big Tech power, regulation and what meaningful resistance can look like. This is the most directly AI/tech-relevant talk of the week — less breathless futurism, more governance, incentives and who gets harmed when platforms design the rules.
Also Worth It
Sadler’s Wells Theatre · Until Sat 13 Jun · Tickets available
Final nights for the company’s current showcase — a high-quality dance option close to home, and a better cultural bet than another generic theatre booking.
Sadler’s Wells East · Sat 13 & Sun 14 Jun · No ticket required
A free weekend at the new east London venue centred on Black dance-floor culture. Useful if Hackney Art Week turns into a broader east-side wander.
Bloomsbury · Tue 16 & Wed 17 Jun, 7pm · Tickets available
Erin Maglaque & Hannah Dawson on Presence Tuesday; Rebecca Tamás & Malcolm Gaskill on The Book of Mysteries Wednesday. Quietly strong literary back-ups.
Levan, Peckham · Sun 14 Jun · £59 set lunch
Kenta Tomoda from Paris’s Les Enfants du Marché joins Levan for smoked langoustine, scallops and a post-lunch Bar Levan party. The one food pick that feels genuinely distinctive this week.
Whitechapel Gallery · Both close Sun 14 Jun
Two shows close together: Senga Nengudi: Performance Works 1972–1982 and Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations. Nengudi’s elastic, bodily, ritual-adjacent performance work is the stronger urgency; Ryan adds material intelligence and memory. Easy to combine with Hackney/Spitalfields plans.
Closes Sunday
Across Hackney · Closes Sun 14 Jun
Do not file this under “ongoing local thing”. It ends this weekend, and the final days are exactly when the street-party / open-studio / chance-encounter energy should peak.
Closes Sunday
Union Chapel · Tue 23 Jun, 7pm
A better-than-usual book-ahead: Laing on art, solitude and the book that made urban loneliness feel intellectually charged rather than merely sad.
Union Chapel · Mon 22 Jun, 7pm
William Dalrymple, Alice Loxton, Peter Frankopan, Gary Younge and Kate Williams each get 15 minutes. Historically nerdy, local, and likely to sell.
Kings Place · Wed 17 Jun, 7.30pm
Technically inside this window, but treat it as a book-now if Wednesday fills up: CNN’s chief international correspondent on the state of the world, also nicely close to King’s Cross.
Curated from London Pop-ups, London On The Inside, Time Out, Hot Dinners, Intelligence Squared, How To Academy, LRB Bookshop, LSE Events, Close-Up Cinema, Café OTO, Vortex, Sadler’s Wells, Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine & friends. The Nudge was checked but blocked by Cloudflare this run.
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Updated 5 Jun 2026