The Table Is Set | Take Your Seat

Quote of the Week - “Wherever you are, be there totally.” - Eckhart Tolle 

Good Afternoon, London. This week, The London Palette is setting the table and every seat has your name on it. In Islington, SicilyFEST is arriving for five full days to remind you that the strongest festivals do not just feed you. They change how you see yourself. Meanwhile, a small cafe in Peckham is doing something quietly radical. It is giving Welsh identity an everyday home in one of London's most layered neighbourhoods. And if you have built something real and are wondering what comes next, Women Who Scale at the Business Design Centre on April 22 is the room where ambition finally meets capital. This week's English and Italian words of the week remind you that appetite, in all its forms, is something to celebrate rather than contain.

Snatched highlights from this edition:

1. Women Who Scale, Finally More Cheques

2. Cannoli Got You Here, Culture Will Keep You

3. Hackney's Walls Are Yours, Now Make Them Speak

4. Live Music - Binker Golding, Femi Kuti & lots more!

Let’s dive in.

—Bybreen Samuels

COUNCIL CANVAS

Hackney's Walls Are Yours | Now Make Them Speak

What does a council do when its walls have become some of the most photographed public art in London? It opens them up again. Hackney Council, in partnership with Wood Street Walls and the Works in Public programme, has issued an open call to Hackney-based artists. They need them to create new large-scale public artworks in and around Hackney Central. It is refreshing to know these are paid opportunities and they are actively seeking expressions of interest. The closing date is May 13 2026. If you are someone who has a connection to the borough, a portfolio and a vision, this is for you. This is a signature, direct invitation a local authority has extended to its own creative community in years.

They have been building towards this moment. Hackney has spent the past decade quietly building one of London's most intentional public art legacies. Ranging from Thomas J. Price's Warm Shores figures outside Hackney Town Hall. To celebrating the Windrush generation, to Veronica Ryan's marble and bronze Custard Apple, Breadfruit and Soursop on Narrow Way. The latter is notable because it is the first permanent public sculpture by a Black female artist anywhere in the UK. Each piece was commissioned; debated, co-designed and rooted in community consultation. By doing so they have set a standard for how public art commissions should actually work.

What makes this call to action significant is where its funding comes from. Delivered through the government-supported London Recovery Fund (LRF) programme, the initiative reflects an important policy position. Public art is not a cultural luxury but a recovery tool. It is a way of reactivating high streets, deepening community identity and creating visible economic opportunity for local creatives. Hackney has already tested this logic through its Section 106 arts fund in Shoreditch and Hoxton. They channelled contributions from developers into participatory arts projects. Collectively involving over 5,000 residents across three years, demonstrating meaningful social impact alongside deep aesthetic value.

If you are keen to get involved then all you need is a portfolio link and a brief note on your connection to Hackney. They allow you to register an expression of interest, after which selected artists will receive a full brief. The borough is demonstrating how accessibility matters because it signals the Council's intent to work with emerging and mid-career artists. Those who are rooted in the borough, and not simply having established names parachuted in for prestige. In a climate where artists are being priced out of the very communities that shaped their practice, a paid, council-backed opportunity is what is needed. This allows artists to make permanent work in their own neighbourhood which is both meaningful and politically astute.

This is Hackney doing what it does best. Firstly, it is treating the public realm as a living argument about who the borough belongs to. Secondly, it is making space for that argument to be answered in paint, marble, bronze and community imagination. If you are a Hackney-connected artist, the deadline is May 13. The walls are waiting for you to decorate them with your imagination.

Find out more here - https://form.typeform.com/to/C2YQoSZC

CITY PALETTE

Sicily Is Not a Postcard | SicilyFEST Proves It

What if a food festival could make you feel like you genuinely belonged somewhere you have never actually lived? From April 30 to May 4, SicilyFEST returns to the Business Design Centre. And this year it is doing something quietly audacious. For the first time it is expanding to five full days. So it now becomes an immersive full long weekend. A place where arancini, panelle, cannoli, wine and aperitifs sit alongside live music, traditional performances and curated exhibitors from across the island. This is not a tasting. This is your invitation.

Once you are in, the programme gives you every reason to stay curious. The 2026 edition is dedicated to the energy of women from southern Italy, with Serena Brancale opening the festival and Delia closing it. They frame Sicily not as a place that is musically current, self-aware and exportable. Even the beloved arancina versus arancino debate gets recast as cultural theatre. Giusina Battaglia unveils the deliberately unifying "Arancin*" as a symbol of Sicily moving beyond inherited divisions without flattening its identity. Every detail has been designed to reward your attention.

By the time you are deep into the programme, you will understand why SicilyFEST is not just another spring food event in a city already crowded with them. After winning Best Italian Food Festival in the UK at the Hospitality Awards UK 2025, it has earned the right to lean into something bigger. By becoming a platform for storytelling, tourism, intercultural exchange and genuine business connection between Sicilian and British communities. The strongest public festivals understand that people like you come for flavour but return for meaning. And SicilyFEST clearly understands both.

So here is your cultural assignment for the long weekend. Go for the cannoli. Stay for the music. And leave thinking about how London increasingly consumes culture through festivals that double as identity laboratories. Places where heritage, commerce and contemporary reinvention share the same table. That tension between celebration and cultural translation is exactly what makes this one worth your time. The table is set. Take your seat.

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

NIGO | The Man Who Taught Luxury How to Dream

You think you know this story. The one where a streetwear kid does well. Luxury fashion houses come calling. And, culture finally catches up. But the Design Museum's landmark exhibition NIGO: From Japan with Love, opening on May 1, insists you look again. This is the first museum retrospective of NIGO's work anywhere outside Japan, and it arrives in London with more than 700 objects. More than 600 of them are drawn from his personal archive. Ranging from fashion, music, Japanese craft, graphic design and vintage Americana. His body of work is so vast that calling him a streetwear designer is like calling the British Museum a storage facility.

NIGO, born Tomoaki Nagao, was raised in 1980s Tokyo's collision of hip-hop, punk, vintage Americana and Japanese subculture. Beyond designing clothes, he built a visual language that taught the global luxury industry how desire actually moves between communities. His star turns at A Bathing Ape in the early 1990s, Human Made, and now Artistic Director of Kenzo. These are not career steps. They are proof of concept. He shows that a teenager in Harajuku with the right cultural antenna could reshape what Paris, New York and London consider aspirational.

The exhibition itself is immersive in all the right ways. You enter through a recreation of NIGO's teenage bedroom in 1980s Tokyo. It is filled with toys, magazines, music memorabilia and vintage Americana filling every corner. Then, you move through his rare early BAPE garments. Also, there are original design drawings, sealed APE Force trainers, Louis Vuitton menswear collaborations and ceramics he created himself. A life-size glass tea house, made specifically for this exhibition, anchors the Japanese craft strand. It reminds you that the same creative mind that built hype culture around a spray-can T-shirt container, also has a deeply serious relationship with traditional making.

There is a gentle tension the Design Museum is staging here. NIGO's career dismantled the boundary between subculture and high fashion long before that became an industry talking point. And he did it through collaboration with Nike, Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams, KAWS, Disney, and Pepsi. He did so at a time when such partnerships were genuinely radical rather than commercially routine. As Design Museum Director Tim Marlow notes, his impact remains "highly significant and under-explored." This observation is precisely what makes this exhibition feel overdue rather than merely celebratory. At £16 per ticket, this is one of the most culturally generous shows London will offer you all year.

Book tickets here - https://designmuseum.org

UNDISCOVERED GEMS

Wales Came to Peckham | Go Meet It

London has cafes for every corner of the world. But until now, not one for Wales. In Peckham, a small Welsh cafe is doing something our city rarely makes room for. And, the moment you hear about it, you will want to find it immediately. If this really is London's first Welsh café, it lands as a novelty and a quietly radical cultural space. It brings bara brith, Welsh cakes, cawl, rarebit and laver-led flavours into a neighbourhood better known for egusi soup rather than specifically Welsh visibility. Bara has caught your attention.

Once the idea takes hold, the contrast keeps you thinking. Welsh culture in London usually reaches you through rugby days, St David's Day programming or the occasional institutional event. But walking into this cafe shifts that identity into something far more intimate, like an everyday ritual. Here, heritage becomes part of your breakfast, your lunch, your conversation rather than an annual performance. That is precisely what makes this an ideal undiscovered gem because it reveals a gap in London’s cultural map. The one you did not even realise was there until someone pointed it out.

The desire builds when you consider why Peckham makes complete sense as its home. This is a part of London built on layered identities, independent food ventures and a genuine appetite for places with a point of view. So a Welsh cafe here feels less like an import and more like a natural translation. The food itself does the rest. There is the warmth of a bowl of cawl on a grey afternoon. The comfort of a freshly baked Welsh cake. And the quiet pleasure of flavours that are both familiar and entirely new to you. This is a heritage you can actually taste, and you will find it hard to resist.

This week, head to South London to taste the bara brith. Order the rarebit. Sit with the story of a place that has chosen Peckham to make a quiet but confident pitch for Welsh identity in our culturally layered city. London is full of international cuisines, but the most intriguing new openings are often the ones that challenge your assumptions closest to home. If this cafe delivers the warmth, specificity and sense of story it promises, then it is more than a discovery. It is the kind of place you will want to tell everyone about before everyone else already has.

Find out more here - https://www.baracafe.com

LONDON BUZZ

Every Woman | The Day That Believes You

Mark June 13 in your diary right now. Not as a maybe, not as a "I'll see how I feel," but as a non-negotiable. Everywoman Festival at the Business Design Centre is the day London finally gives women's health the kind of stage it has always deserved. A vibrant, unapologetic, clinically grounded one. A place surrounded by conversations, workshops, art, music and food. Together, they make the whole experience feel like the best day out you have had in years. The fact that you are at a medical conference, will not cross your mind.

The format is engaging because it is clinically led and community powered. Meaning the information you receive is evidence-based and trustworthy. But it is delivered in an environment that feels warm, welcoming and completely free of judgment. Whether you are navigating perimenopause, postpartum or simply trying to understand your body better than the healthcare system has ever helped you to, this festival is for you. It meets you exactly where you are. Every age, every stage, every question you have been too embarrassed to ask out loud, this is the room for it.

The driving force behind Everywoman Festival is Professor Julie Cornish. She built this event out of a very specific and very justified frustration. The number of times women are told their symptoms are simply normal, simply hormonal, simply something to live with. That dismissal ends here. The festival is a direct, public challenge to the long-standing habit of minimising women's pain. And the fact that it delivers that challenge through joy, community and celebration rather than protest, makes it even more powerful.

You will leave better informed, more connected and significantly less alone in whatever you are carrying. Finally, women’s health literacy is being treated as a public priority rather than a private concern, Everywoman Festival on June 13 is not just a standout date. It is the kind of day that quietly changes how you see yourself and what you are prepared to accept. Clear your diary and fill it with this date.

Find out more here - https://www.everywomanfest.com

LONDON SOUNDSCAPE

Electric Brixton - April 22

Femi Kuti is not a show performer, he convenes a movement. The son of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti arrives with The Positive Force and his powerful new album Journey Through Life, Femi blends commanding saxophone, pulsating polyrhythms and dancers who make the stage feel like Lagos's New Africa Shrine. You can revel in the sharp political commentary and deep personal reflections that sit together in a setlist that spans decades without ever losing its urgency. This show will stay with you.

Book tickets here - https://www.electricbrixton.uk.com

Hackney Empire - April 24

Forty years of one of the most powerful voices in soul and dance music, and Jocelyn Brown. Hackney Empire hosts her first London show since a sold-out Jazz Café residency. Enjoy the celebration of her four extraordinary decades with a full live band and a catalogue that defined dancefloors from Harlem to Hackney. Somebody Else's Guy, Keep On Jumpin', Something Goin' On, are songs that simply refuse to age. Special guest Rozalla, the original Queen of Rave, brings Everybody's Free to complete the evening. Get ready for a joyful evening.

Book tickets here - https://www.hackneyempire.co.uk

Jamboree - April 18

Some music asks you to surrender. On Saturday 18 April at 9pm, Jamboree in King's Cross becomes the stage for Okailey. Master drummer Abass Dodoo's electrifying collective, promises to deliver a sonic celebration where Ghanaian ancestral rhythms collide with jazz improvisation. Their Afro-rock fire, sax and violin melodies will literally melt the room. You are in for a treat as Highlife classics get reinvented in real time. This is African music refusing to stand still and nor will you.

Book tickets here - https://www.jamboreevenue.co.uk

Morocco Bound - April 24

There are evenings that allow you to flow and bossa nova was invented for exactly those nights. Morocco Bound invites you into something rare and unhurried. Mario Bakuna's intimate tribute to João Gilberto, the Brazilian genius who whispered a revolution into existence and changed the shape of popular music forever. You can expect the warm nylon-string intimacy, and the signature featherlight vocal touch. And of course there are those gorgeous suspended harmonies that make bossa nova feel less like music and more like a state of mind. Arrive early, breathe slowly.

Book tickets here - https://www.moroccobound.co.uk

Ninety One Dalston - April 19

The magic of a jazz jam is that nobody, not even the musicians knows exactly where the night will land. Jazz on the Lane: In Time Jam invites you into that glorious uncertainty. House musicians set the groove and open-call players step up to trade ideas, challenge each other and collectively build something that will never exist again, after the show. This is jazz in its most democratic, spontaneous and thrilling form. Soak up this creative conversation with no fixed conclusion.

Book tickets here - https://www.trumanbrewery.com

Pizza Express Live Soho - April 20

What happens when Britain's most outspoken restaurant critic sits down at the piano and decides the ‘80s deserved better? You will find out when Jay Rayner's Sextet takes the jazz-inflected chart hits of Sade, Swing Out Sister, Matt Bianco and Sting, and strips them down. Then, rebuilds them as serious jazz arrangements delivered by six exceptional musicians. The Sextet will entertain you with blistering playing, funny stories from Jay's life in food and journalism. Plus, there will be the quiet revelation that Smooth Operator always belonged in a jazz club. This Monday night energy is not to be missed.

Book tickets here - https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com

606 Club - April 18

There are saxophonists who play jazz, and then there is Binker Golding. He always appears to think through his instrument in real time. On Saturday April 18 at 9pm, this MOBO-winning, tenor saxophone giant, takes over the stage. Binker’s latest album Dream Like a Dogwood Wild Boy moves fluidly between blues, abstraction and deep jazz tradition. Described by AllAboutJazz as having "considerable depth, fiery, intricate and engaging," Binker brings a tight quartet into one of London's most intimate settings. This is a night of serious jazz for serious listeners.

Book tickets here - https://www.606club.co.uk

The Jazz Cafe - April 23

If the name Nissi does not stop you mid-scroll, a night at The Jazz Cafe will change that forever. Sister of Burna Boy, celebrated musician and visual artist, Nissi Ogulu brings her vibrant fusion of Afrobeats, R&B, funk and soul to Camden. She is ready to dazzle you with her acclaimed EP Ignite and the rich storytelling of her expansive Unboxed project. Her lyrics are woven in English, Yoruba and pidgin, and when she sings her vocals feel both global and deeply personal. Head to Jazz Cafe to hear and feel them deeply.

Book tickets here - https://thejazzcafe.com

BUSINESS SCENE

Women Who Scale | Finally More Cheques

Over the decades, there have been so many talks about women in business. But something seems to be shifting and it is not just the rhetoric, it is the room. If you are a female founder, building a business or have reached the point where ambition needs capital to match it, Women Who Scale Expo is where you need to be. On April 22 - 23 you can explore the infrastructure that creates leverage in your business.

Look closely and you will see and understand what it is built to fix. On day one, you can pitch live in a competition judged by former Small Business Commissioner Liz Barclay. Two winners will walk away with a £3,000 strategic coaching package. The Scale Ventures Fund, chaired by Andrew B Morris, will be actively scouting female founders in real time. Surrounding you will be more than 4,000 scaleup leaders, 100 exhibitors, 60 speakers and 100 hours of learning across both days. This is not a panel event with a diversity slot bolted on. This is a parallel economy being built in plain sight, and you belong in it.

The tension co-founder Amy Knight names so precisely is the one you may already know from personal experience. The problem has never been a shortage of talent, ambition or ideas among women founders. The gap appears at the scaleup stage, where businesses need capital to accelerate and where female founders have historically been significantly underfunded relative to their male counterparts. Women Who Scale was built to close that gap by placing you at the very centre of one of the UK's most commercially serious growth ecosystems.

You can attend the expo floor for free. However, the summit sessions are ticketed. And the pitch competition is open to female, non-binary and underrepresented founders. If the true measure of progress is access to capital rather than access to applause, then this is the event asking the right question. On April 22 at the Business Design Centre, it is asking it in front of the right people. If you have built something real and are ready for what comes next, this is your room, to make it happen.

Book tickets here - https://www.scale-london.com

LINGUISTIC TAPESTRY - WORDS OF THE WEEK 

English Word:
Edacious
Pronunciation: /ɪˈdeɪ.ʃəs/
Definition: Relating to or given to eating in large quantities. Voracious, devouring, or consuming with great appetite and enthusiasm. From the Latin edax from edere, to eat, it carries the sense of an appetite so strong it borders on all-consuming. Cultural Note: It captures that particular kind of person who consumes ideas, experiences, art and conversation with the same uninhibited hunger they bring to a good meal.

Italian Word:
Abbiocco
Pronunciation: /ab.ˈbjɔk.ko/
Definition: That sudden, heavy drowsiness that descends on you after a large, satisfying meal. The irresistible, almost narcotic urge to sleep that no amount of espresso can fully defeat. There is no precise single-word English equivalent, which is exactly what makes it worth knowing. 
Cultural Note: Abbiocco is a word that the Italians invented because they needed it. On the surface it is simply a food word, the post-lunch slump, the Sunday afternoon surrender to the sofa. But it carries within it an entire philosophy about pleasure, pace and the dignity of rest.

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