Places for Curious Minds
Science, philosophy, politics, design and public ideas for people who still enjoy changing their minds.
The city's best public-intellectual programme is scattered across institutions that rarely appear in the same guide. Here are the lecture halls, museums and debating rooms where specialists explain their work properly, difficult questions are allowed to remain difficult, and an ordinary evening can open an unexpected line of inquiry.
19 venues
Wellcome Collection
Medicine, bodies, art and society examined without simplifying the difficult parts.
Explore venue →Conway Hall
London's humanist hall has made room for dissenting ideas since 1929.
Explore venue →Intelligence Squared
Structured debates that take opposing arguments and the audience seriously.
Explore venue →LSE
Economics, politics and social science discussed by researchers and public figures.
Explore venue →Linnean Society of London
Natural history and evolutionary science from the world's oldest active biological society.
Explore venue →Design Museum
A place to examine how designed objects shape behaviour, systems and everyday life.
Explore venue →SOAS
Public scholarship on Asia, Africa and the Middle East from a genuinely international institution.
Explore venue →The London Society
Architecture, planning and the future of London explored through talks and urban history.
Explore venue →Shakespeare's Globe
Talks, research events and theatrical history make the Globe as much a public-ideas venue as a theatre.
Shakespeare's Globe is the Bankside theatre complex built around the reconstructed open-air Globe Theatre and the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Its programme combines Shakespe…
Explore venue →Open City
Architecture, urban history and the city explained through talks, walks and Open House.
Open City is the architecture organisation behind Open House London, running talks, walks and public programmes that open the city's buildings and debates about urban life to a wid…
Explore venue →BLOC (Queen Mary University of London)
A university film and drama arts research facility with cinema, multiscreen gallery, studio, performance and post-production spaces in Mile End.
BLOC is Queen Mary University of London's Film & Drama Arts Research Facility in Mile End: a digitally networked, fully accessible complex with a state-of-the-art cinema, multiscre…
Explore venue →Museum of the Home
A Hoxton museum using rooms, collections, gardens and public programmes to ask what home means across design, migration, domestic history and everyday life.
Museum of the Home explores the idea of home through exhibitions, collections, gardens, design, domestic history, migration stories, textiles, architecture and public programmes fr…
Explore venue →Southwark Playhouse
A theatre institution where new work, public talks and South London cultural life meet.
Southwark Playhouse is a major Off-West-End theatre institution in Elephant & Castle, operating Southwark Playhouse Borough at 77-85 Newington Causeway and Southwark Playhouse Elep…
Explore venue →The Bread & Roses Theatre
A small theatre where experimental performance, public comedy and emerging voices meet.
The Bread & Roses Theatre is an intimate fringe pub theatre above The Bread & Roses Pub in Clapham. Its programme centres new writing, underrepresented voices, distinctive fringe w…
Explore venue →Royal Institution
Public science in the building where some of its most important discoveries were made.
Explore venue →RSA Public Talks
Public conversations connecting social change, design, economics and civic life.
Explore venue →Frontline Club
Journalists and documentary makers discussing events beyond the news cycle.
Explore venue →The School of Life
Psychology, philosophy and emotional life translated into accessible public discussion.
Explore venue →How To Academy
Long-form conversations with writers, thinkers and specialists across disciplines.
Explore venue →