If our enthusiastic dance previews didn't inspire you to go as far as actually parting with cash for contemporary dance then perhaps you could cut your teeth on free events happening as part of London's International Festival of Contemporary Dance: Dance Umbrella. If you work near Liverpool Street then, this lunchtime or any lunchtime in the next 29 days, you can stumble across Paul-Andre Fortier performing "Solo 30x30" whilst you nip out for a......

Can you imagine the floorspace of 13 Royal Albert Halls or 10 St Paul’s Cathedrals? We are boggled by it. But that’s what’s beneath the dome (and that’s the last time we’ll mention that word…) of The O2, London’s latest flagship entertainment venue rising like a massive, hi-tech media phoenix from the ashes of its sorry millennial baggage. The Guardian was granted an exclusive scout about this week reporting on the 23,000 seater arena,......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 18th June 1972: A British European Airways plane bound for Brussels crashes moments after taking off from Heathrow airport, killing all 118 passengers. An inquiry later concludes that the pilot had made a ‘speed error’ and stalled the plane, causing it to crash into a field in Staines. Tuesday – 19th June 1997: McDonald’s wins a libel case against two members of the ‘London Greenpeace’ campaigning group.......

We, at Londonist, love all things artsy that try different things in unusual places. We also really love free things hence we’re collectively hopping up and down with excitement at the prospect of this year’s Greenwich & Docklands International Festival which kicks off four amazing days of free arts festivalness this week. We went last year. It was great. "Festival Fanfare" promises to open proceedings on Thursday evening with riotous street arts, music and......

Pigeons used to be a nuisance in Trafalgar Square, filling the place with feathery disease and streaky poo; for the next three weeks, it's going to be wall to wall performers. Less poo, in some cases just as many feathers. And for some reason, this year there are lots of balls. Lots of balls. Oddball Australian outfit Strangefruit who put on a colourfully crazy show on bendy poles for the Greenwich and Docklands International......

Yup, it’s voting time, folks. Head over to the LIFT site to have your say on a futuristic events space for London. The so-caled ‘New Parliament‘ will be a temporary, portable building at the heart of the 2008 LIFT biennial. It’s going to travel the country, starting in Newham, moving to the South Bank, and then on to other parts of the UK - and beyond. Conceived as an iconic structure like no other,......

The Londonist Culture Crawl started in Canary Wharf for the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival - and we knew it was going to be colourful the second we emerged from the cool grey steel-toned enclosure of Canary Wharf station and were confronted with the gigantic orange inflatable set for Candoco Dance Company's Minotoria. Blinking and scratching our heads, we watched as the company's able and disable-bodied performers moved around to a growling, bass-heavy soundtrack......

Ever so occasionally we'll hear of an event that is well off the London radar, but we quite fancy anyway. If it's within the catchment area of the Ist network we'll pass it along, but at the time of writing, Manchesterist is nothing but a glimmer in a Northern blogger's eye. It falls to us then to give a quick plug to something going on up North that we think you'll find interesting for......

There are some parts of London that just don’t know when to stop. Greenwich has already got a shipload of interesting and beautiful things to visit such as the ruddy big Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory, the Old Royal Naval College which is now the University of Greenwich and Trinity College of Music and the almighty, river-spanning foot tunnel. For a brief while, it looked like it might have the London Eye too. And......

With the race for the 2012 Olympics becoming a very close run thing it's time for the London committee to pull out the big guns...literally. This week the Royal Navy aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious sailed up the Thames and it was flying a London 2012 Olympics flag. What a 22,000-ton battleship has to do with London hosting an international sporting event, we're still unsure, but we can tell you that Defence Secretary John Reid......