New Tables, New Stages, New Maps | This Week, Everything Shifts

Women Reclaim the House of Jazz at the Southbank, Beyond Books, Deptford is London’s New Literary Cauldron, From TV to Table, Dom Taylor Gambles on Dalston Square, Georgia Cecile Brings Her Award-Winning Vocals to Ronnie Scott's!

Author

Bybreen Samuels
February 26, 2026

©Freepik

Quote of the Week - “Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.” - E. Dickinson

Good Afternoon, London. This week, everything shifts and The London Palette is here to make sure you don't miss a beat. On March 21, Wandsworth bows out of being the Borough of Culture by turning Battersea Power Station into a free, genre-defying finale. Meanwhile, a tangled web of red and black thread is quietly taking over the Hayward Gallery, where Chiharu Shiota is turning wool, keys, and memory into something that feels uncomfortably like your inner life made visible. And if your palate is as curious as your mind, Dom Taylor has finally given his acclaimed Caribbean cooking a permanent home in Dalston. Spring is nearly here and with it, there is an unmistakable feeling that our city is ready to surprise you all over again.

Snatched highlights from this edition:

  1. Enter the Last Dance at Borough of Culture’s Farewell

  2. Hurry, Your Next Cultural Awakening Is Boarding Now

  3. Chiharu Shiota Turns the Hayward into a Beating Heart

  4. Live Music - Acantha Lang, Yazmin Lacey & lots more!

Let’s dive in.

—Bybreen Samuels

COUNCIL CANVAS

Wandsworth’s Last Dance Has a £1.35m Hangover Cure

©Battersea Power Station

Closing time usually means the lights go up and the magic dies. But Wandsworth has other ideas. On March 21, the confetti cannon finally runs dry on Wandsworth’s year as the London Borough of Culture. However, rather than quietly handing the baton to the next borough, they are staging The Beat Goes On. Their massive, free finale at Battersea Power Station will feel less like a goodbye and more like a statement of intent. The headline embodies the music, the eclectic, almost chaotic mix of programming that mirrors London itself. UK Garage legends Lisa Maffia and Romeo share a bill with a Dolly Parton tribute act and a New Orleans Second Line band.

If you are a culturally engaged Londoner, the Borough of Culture tagline can often feel like a branding exercise. You know the one where a logo is slapped onto existing events. Wandsworth is trying to prove it was an engine for genuine change. By placing this finale at the Power Station, a site that transitioned from an industrial relic to a luxury playground, they are reclaiming the space for the community. Even if it is only for one day. It is a stress test for the borough's year-long promise to understand and prove whether high-gloss regeneration can co-exist with grassroots grit.

The context here is the £1.35 million Mayor of London Award that fueled this year. Critics often ask where that money goes. On March 21, you will see it in the Urban Flow flag parade and the return of Strictly Wandsworth. But the real return on investment is invisible. The Council has pivoted hard into the idea of Creative Health, by embedding arts into local NHS services and social prescribing. While you are watching circus acts from Brainfools, the policy machinery underneath continues to be productive. The aim is to ensure that when the stage is deconstructed, the mental health networks built through these arts programmes remain.

The danger with these cultural years is the sudden withdrawal of funding and focus. The Beat Goes On is designed to bridge that gap. By involving local creative networks like World Heart Beat and Jellyfish Theatre in the finale, the Council is betting that these relationships are now strong enough to survive without the Borough of Culture title. The implication for you? Well, you have to watch closely. If this works, it becomes a blueprint for how boroughs can use culture not just for parties, but for public health policy.​

Head to Battersea on March 21. Yes, go for the garage anthems and the river views. But look around at the crowd. If the audience is as diverse as the lineup, from the luxury flat owners to the council estate residents, then Wandsworth has succeeded. Because beyond throwing a party, they would actually have built a legacy. And, in a city as fragmented as ours, that is a beat worth keeping alive.

Book free tickets here - https://welcometowandsworth.com

CITY PALETTE

Women Reclaim the House of Jazz at the Southbank

©Jazzwise

Jazz has always had a founding fathers problem. The Southbank Centre is rewriting the family tree in March to celebrate International Women’s Day. From March 13-15, the Women in Jazz organization is staging a takeover that feels less like a concert series and more like a correction of the historical record. Headlining the weekend on Friday the 13th is Lucy-Anne Daniels. She is a vocalist whose improvisational fire has been scorching intimate venues across the UK. Seeing her command the Purcell Room is a signal that the rising star label is being peeled off because she has arrived. The following day, on Saturday the 14th, the programme shifts from performance to deep dialogue with In Conversation with Celeste. Music journalist Emma Warren sits down with the soul-jazz heavyweight to dissect not just her sound, but the specific, often invisible, lineage of women who shaped the genre’s modern voice.

For too long, Women in Jazz has been treated as a sub-genre or a special interest box to tick during International Women's Day. This residency repositions women not as guests in the house of jazz, but as its architects. By pairing high profile talks with visceral live performances, the Southbank is acknowledging that the future of jazz in London is more than male instrumentalists in suits. The reality is its fluid, vocal-led, and deeply connected to soul and R&B narratives that women have always driven.​

This takeover sits within the broader Southbank Centre x Montreux Jazz Festival Residency. This is a collaboration and smart pairing designed to answer the question, What is jazz today? While Montreux brings global prestige, the Women in Jazz programming brings the grassroots London energy. The organisation has spent years building infrastructure for female musicians ranging from radio shows to mentorship schemes. And this weekend is the public-facing celebration of that grind. Plus, it throws down a direct challenge to festival bookers everywhere. If you cannot find female headliners, you are not looking hard enough.

If you think you know the London jazz sound, now is the time to test your assumptions. Dispense with the idea that this is background music for a dinner party. It is art that demands your full attention. Whether you’re a long-time vinyl selector or someone who just loves a voice that can stop a room, this weekend offers a rare intimacy in a major venue. Your cup will be filled with entertainment and a new set of names that you will be bragging about seeing “back when" in a few years' time.

Chiharu Shiota Turns the Hayward into a Beating Heart

©Dscene Magazine

If you have ever walked into the Hayward Gallery and thought, “This building already feels like a concrete cathedral,” Chiharu Shiota is about to add the missing ingredient. Namely, Pulse. From February 17 to May 3 2026, her exhibition Threads of Life takes over the top floor with floor-to-ceiling, web-like installations made from wool thread that swallow everyday objects. Think keys, beds, shoes, and chairs, until they feel like evidence in a case about being human. This is her first major solo exhibition in a London public gallery. Chiharu’s vision lands with the kind of ambition that does not politely hang on the walls, instead it occupies the air.

The hook is simple. Chiharu makes the invisible stuff visible. Her work is built around the idea that life is essentially a network of memory, bodies, loss, and relationships. She blends them together with red, black, and white thread stretched into immersive structures you can walk through. Hayward’s brutalist architecture becomes part of the drama here. Those hard angles and raw surfaces act like a stage for something intimate, almost tender, to happen at scale. Beyond viewing the show, you move inside it. Imagine stepping inside someone's mind of flowing thoughts.

The Threads of Life maze is grounded in reality because it is tethered to real, lived experiences. The press notes frame the installations as emotionally charged, drawn from personal events like grief, the proximity of death, the daily questions of meaning that are then expanded into universal concerns. Whilst there, you will also see documentation of Chiharu’s early performances. Plus work linked to her collaboration with writer Yoko Tawada. In other words, her work is more than just spectacle. She wants you to see it as a practice with a backstory, and the exhibition lets you trace the evolution.

Here’s why you should go, even if you think installations are not for you. This show is about connection without forcing small talk, and reflection without requiring you to sit still.

UNDISCOVERED GEMS

Beyond Books, Deptford is City’s New Literary Cauldron

©London Writers’ Centre

Book fiends, you can tuck into Deptford Lounge March 21-28 for the fifth Deptford Literature Festival. With over 30 events, you can feast on talks, workshops, kid-friendly scribbles, and open-mic sessions. Unpack Lewisham's untold tales from voices like Sarah Howe, Leone Ross, and Jimi Famurewa in a community cauldron that feels more family reunion than formal festival. Free lead-ins tease with Poetry in the Library via Fathima Zahra and Jack Underwood. Erica Hesketh's Lewisham Writes, primes the pump for Saturday's March 28 explosion of stories.

Black male writers Jimi Famurewa, Derek Owusu, and Aniefiok Ekpoudom spar on Navigating Culture: Britain Today. While South London in Fiction, pits Orlaine McDonald, Lisa Smith, and Francis Spufford on neighborhood musings. Windrush echoes resound in Mouth Mek Fi Nyam readings with Joan Anim-Addo, Marlène Edwin, and elder. Children can also craft poetry letters with Stephen Lightbown. While teenagers decode comedy with Nathanael Lessore. Tutku Barbaros' Writers’ Link Up offers industry clinics amid Poetics Lab showcases. CRIPtic Arts expands the offering with an online salon with Abi Palmer with dreams about sustainable disabled creativity.

London Writers Centre's brainchild is backed by The Albany, borough libraries, and Lewisham Council. Collectively, they offer 48% free access. Previous years have sparked more than 100 connections within local literary circles. And, there has been a 20% growth in grassroots events. Ruth Harrison nails it by having, “Spaces for unheard stories amid tough times, fostering dynamic chats over polished panels.” This is definitely one for your calendar if you want to enjoy stories that have been unearthed on your doorstep. Your next favourite voice lives just five tube stations away.

LONDON BUZZ

Hurry, Your Next Cultural Awakening Is Boarding Now

©Alice-Photo Shutterstock

There's a particular kind of cultural vertigo that only travel produces. It is the one where you step off a plane, absorb a city that does everything slightly differently, and return to London seeing it with completely new eyes. A weekend in Paris recalibrates your relationship with architecture. A long haul to Southeast Asia rewires your palate. A few days in Seoul sends you home rethinking music and technology. And, Lagos forces you to reconsider the meaning of definitive fashion. The expansion unfolding across London's airports right now is an invitation to widen your cultural frame of reference. Then bring all of that richness back home to the city you already love.

Start with Gatwick, because it is quietly turning into your airport for spontaneous culture. This summer it is launching a wave of new routes with a surge of new airlines, which usually means more choice and more competitive pricing. Both will help when you are browsing for your break. Expand your horizons beyond predictable beach destinations. There are new long haul links to Kuala Lumpur and Qingdao. They open up East Asian food, design and art scenes that some of you may have only read about. Big connectors like Air France to Paris, give you a permission slip to say yes to exhibitions, ballet, and a lunch that turns into a six-hour philosophy seminar.

Meanwhile, Heathrow is doing what Heathrow does. Namely, widening the map, but this time with you in mind too. With new routes including Seoul Incheon, Phuket, Seattle, and St. Louis, you build upon your personal wanderlust montage. Furthermore, they allow our city to remain plugged into the world’s creative circuits. You have access to music scenes, design weeks, film festivals, and food cultures without having to change planes twice. Heathrow is also investing heavily in terminal and baggage upgrades, so the airport you have merely tolerated could become one you grow to love.

When London becomes easier to leave, it often becomes more interesting to return to. More routes not only move you beyond our borders, they also pull the world into our city. There are more visitors in our theatres, more diners trying the Nigerian spot your friend always talks about, and more overseas artists building London into their tour schedules. In the background, the "big future" conversation around Heathrow's proposed third runway is really a debate about what kind of global city London wants to be in the next decade. Do we want to be more connected and culturally porous? Or, will we be quietly edged out by rival hubs. It turns out that the boarding gate is a very London bridge that connects us to the world.

LONDON SOUNDSCAPE

Boisdale of Canary Wharf - March 4

When you need an escape from grey skies, sometimes the quickest flight to Havana is the DLR to Canary Wharf. The velvet-lined opulence of Boisdale transforms into a vibrant Cuban dancehall as Sambroso Noda the beating heart of London's Latin music community, leads his All Star band in a high-octane tribute to Buena Vista Social Club. You can expect an intoxicating collision of romantic boleros, driving rumba rhythms, and classic Cuban Son that practically demands you order a rum on ice. Come for the world-class percussion and stay because the infectious energy will make it impossible to remain in your seat.

Electric Brixton - March 6

If London’s current jazz-soul revival had a voice, it would sound exactly like Yazmin Lacey pouring her heart out over a Fender Rhodes. Fresh off a US tour and a stint with BADBADNOTGOOD in Paris, she is bringing her achingly honest blend of R&B, jazz, and soul back home to Brixton. Timing the show ahead of her highly anticipated second album, Teal Dreams, Yazmin trades polished perfection for raw vulnerability, making a 1,500-capacity venue feel like she is singing just for you. Enjoy an evening full of expansive grooves, profound presence, and music that genuinely breathes.

Fox and Firkin - March 3

Some gigs feel like you discovered them, not that an algorithm served them. On Tuesday, head to Lewisham and let Leo Power do the rest. Join the crowd to catch every shift in mood and tone. Arrive early, grab a drink, and settle into that sweet spot between attentive listening and friendly chaos. Come ready to be surprised, because the best nights here are the ones you can’t quite describe. They are the nights you recommend to your friends the next day.

Book tickets here - https://foxfirkin.com

Hootananny Brixton - March 1

There is a specific kind of magic that happens when an artist writes complex jazz fusion on a double-decker bus while touring with a pop star. And, that is exactly the origin story of Greg Spero's Spirit Fingers project. The Chicago-native pianist, who cut his teeth playing with everyone from Halsey to the Miles Electric Band, is bringing his genre-bending sound to Brixton on Sunday. He has recruited a crew of top-tier young London instrumentalists to help him blur the lines between traditional jazz depth, classical composition, R&B soul, and modern funk. Greg’s eclectic fusion will give you a high energy buzz.

Book tickets here - https://hootanannybrixton.co.uk

Pizza Express Live Holborn - March 5

While the West End brings the theatrics, sometimes you just want the raw, unadulterated groove of a basement club and a band that knows how to find the pocket. On the very same night the major musical premieres, Pizza Express offers you a more intimate celebration of the funk icon with Simply Chaka. Fronted by the powerhouse vocals of Jaelee Small and backed by a razor sharp rhythm section, this tribute cuts straight to the music. Take time to settle in with your favourite glass of wine and let classics like I Feel for You and Ain't Nobody remind you why her songbook is entirely bulletproof.

Royal Albert Hall - March 6

Trading the streets of Accra for the Victorian grandeur of South Kensington requires a specific kind of swagger, and rap titan Sarkodie has it in spades. On March 6, the undisputed king of African hip-hop brings his legendary Rapperholic concert to London for the very first time. Sarkodie's appearance is timed to celebrate Ghana’s Independence Day. This historic show at the Royal Albert Hall, allows you to experience a spectacular collision of pulsing rhythms, lyrical genius, and unadulterated national pride. With a surprise lineup of star-studded friends joining him, you are in for an electrifying night.

Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club - March 4

There is a fine line between singing jazz classics and merely tracing them, but Georgia Cécile knows how to make the Great American Songbook bleed fresh ink. Georgia brings her award-winning vocals into the reimagined Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s for an intimate masterclass in musical storytelling. She is backed by the beautifully crafted arrangements of the Jamie Safir Trio, and channels the expressive power of legends like Sarah Vaughan while injecting her own soulful grit. This is your night to immerse yourself in timeless standards that are pulled out of the history books and brought into the present moment.

606 Club - March 1

Every so often a vocalist comes along who doesn't just cover songs, she inhabits them, unpacks them, and hands them back to you completely transformed. On March 1, Acantha Lang presents Standing on the Shoulders of Soul Legends. A lovingly curated evening paying tribute to the towering women who built the soul canon from Aretha, Nina, Etta, and beyond. With her rich, storytelling voice and rare emotional intelligence, Acantha does not mimic her heroines, she holds a conversation with them. You are in for an intimate, sophisticated, and deeply moving night.

BUSINESS SCENE

From TV to Table, Dom Taylor Gambles on Dalston

(c)The Upcoming

Dom Taylor, the winner of Netflix and Channel 4’s Five Star Kitchen, has officially stopped playing the pop-up game. After a successful but temporary residency at The Langham and a brief stint in Notting Hill, Dom has planted his flag in Dalston Square. He now has a permanent base for The Good Front Room, which opened on February 5. While his TV win gave him the glossy Michelin-adjacent stamp on his resume, this move to Dalston signals a shift from being a competition winner to serious restaurateur. Dom has taken over the former Mildreds site at 1 Thomas Tower, which positions himself directly in a neighbourhood with deep African and Caribbean roots but a rapidly gentrifying dining scene.

The Good Front Room is a case study in brand alignment. The Langham was a prestigious launchpad, but it was always an odd cultural fit for a concept rooted in the sacred front rooms of the Windrush generation. By moving to Dalston, Dom is bringing the product to its spiritual home while retaining the five star operational rigour he honed at the hotel. It’s a calculated bet that the local demographic wants premium Caribbean food without the Mayfair stiffness. He is trading footfall for community relevance, a move that often yields higher lifetime customer value in the hospitality sector.​

The business model here leans on elevated nostalgia. The menu features high margin, high comfort dishes like Short Rib Brown Stew and Whole Jerk Chicken for two, alongside a £16 cocktail list that includes a charitable donation to Jamaica’s Hurricane Relief Fund. This is a smart execution of corporate social responsibility practices that builds community goodwill. With 80 covers and a location right next to Dalston Junction station, the volume potential is significant. Unlike the Langham, where he was a guest in someone else’s profit and lost, this is Dom’s equity on the line. He is also diversifying revenue streams with live music and spoken word events. So the venue becomes a cultural hub rather than just a dinner spot.

If you are looking for a reservation that feels like an event, this is it. But beyond the food, watch how Dom manages the transition from TV Chef to Business Owner. If The Good Front Room succeeds in Dalston, it proves that the new path for culinary talent is not just about getting a cookbook deal. The leverage is in building a scalable brand that can survive outside the reality TV bubble. Book a table now before the Netflix algorithm reminds everyone else he is back.

LINGUISTIC TAPESTRY - WORDS OF THE WEEK 

English Word:
Rapacious
Pronunciation: /rə-PAY-shəs/
Definition:  Aggressively greedy or grasping, particularly in the pursuit of wealth, resources, or power; driven by an insatiable appetite that takes without restraint or regard for others. Cultural Note: Rapacious is the word that cuts through the polite language of boardrooms and policy papers to name what everyone in the room already senses. It carries the energy of a predator, not merely ambitious, but consuming.

Korean Word:
Nunchi (눈치)
Pronunciation: /NOON-chee/
Definition:  Literally translating to mean eye measure or eye force. Nunchi is the subtle art of gauging the mood of others, reading the room, and responding with emotional intelligence. It is the ability to instantly understand a situation without anyone saying a word.
Cultural Note: In Korean culture, nunchi is considered an essential survival skill and a pillar of social harmony. You are not taught nunchi, you are expected to absorb it. Someone with quick nunchi anticipates needs before they are voiced and navigates complex social dynamics smoothly, ensuring everyone feels comfortable.

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