Whether you’re back from your Christmas holiday or you never left London, here are five more ideas to get the most out of our fair and festive city. (Some of our suggestions from last week are ongoing, so check it out if you missed it.)
- Watch the New Year’s Day Parade as it meanders from Piccadilly to Parliament Square. Participants include Heroes for Charity (dressed as Star Wars characters), the Donkey Breed Society (everyone loves donkeys!), plus a range of vintage cars, magical balloons and marching bands. Starting at midday, the parade includes the annual borough competition, with acts or floats entered to compete for a charity prize of £40,000 (e.g., Ealing’s entry: Bollywood Bhangra; Hammersmith & Fulham’s: Fabulous Fairies and Mythical Beasts).
- Enjoy a pop-up performance of The Nutcracker at the V&A. A family event running from Monday the 28th of December through Thursday the 31st, this free contemporary dance performance is on at 11am, 1pm and 3pm. If you’d rather be the dancer than the viewer, head to a pop-up performance workshop, also family-friendly and inspired by The Nutcracker, from Saturday the 2nd of January through Monday the 4th (same daily timings). If you’re at the V&A on a Sunday, you can join a drop-in design session to make ‘imaginative seasonal decorations’ on the 27th of December or the 3rd of January.
- Animate Ice Age animals at the British Museum. On Sunday the 3rd of January, kids aged 7 and older can use stop-motion software to make Ice Age animals run, swim and play. This is another cool (no pun intended) event where you can simply drop in and take part, running between 11am and 4pm.
- Sing carols to celebrate the epiphany at Hampton Court Palace. Croon in the courtyards of the palace accompanied by the Epsom & Ewell Silver Band, on the 4th of January at 7pm (£10 adults, £5 children, and bring a torch!). If the singing event sells out, you can check out the Elizabethan Christmas from the 27th of December to the 3rd of January, which includes singing and dancing, jesters and jugglers (included in the cost of palace tickets).
- See the city illuminated at Lumiere London. Okay, not technically the week between Christmas and New Year’s, this free event earned its mention here for its potential to banish any post-Christmas blues. From Thursday the 14th through Sunday the 17th of January 2016, a range of artists will illuminate sites in King’s Cross and the West End at London’s ‘biggest-ever light festival’. You can make your way to the 20 or so displays—which include a phone box full of fish and electromagnetic waves from passing mobile phones transformed into ‘a display of light, sound and colour’—with a downloadable map to be released in early January, but in the meantime you can see how some of the installations will look.
