Music
From nabbing presale tickets to free lunchtime gigs and local jam nights, there are a plethora of ways to find yourself enjoying live music without having to delve into your life savings or wait in a queue of thousands. Last-minute seat-filler sites present an inexpensive or often free option for those looking to head to shows in the coming days. The confusingly named ShowFilmFirst is perhaps the most well-established subscription site for cheap seats to events that are struggling to shift tickets. The only proviso is discretion: you can’t mention to your neighbours that you grabbed the £100 ticket next to them for a fiver.
For classical music aficionados, the London Symphony Orchestra put on free lunchtime concerts with opportunities to ask the orchestra questions on Fridays at their St Luke’s home in east London, while the Southbank Centre also hosts twice-monthly free concerts from upcoming artists as part of its Futuretense series.
During the summer months, keep an eye out for locally funded free arts festivals as part of your nearest city’s cultural offering. In south-east London, Greenwich Peninsula hosts a stellar jazz lineup every summer, featuring the likes of DJ Tina Edwards and guitarist Jamie Leeming for its latest edition, plus Ibibio Sound Machine and Girl Ray at August’s Turning Tides event, while Salford’s We Invented the Weekend festival takes over Media City each summer for free DJ sets, arts workshops and talks.
For the night owls, heading down to a well-established jam night can be a great way to catch touring artists passing through town and looking to play with local talent. In Glasgow, the Rum Shack regularly platforms the city’s jazz talent, while Birmingham’s Pan-Pan and Warehouse Cafe also host well-established jams of their own. In London, meanwhile, Hackney’s Orii Community and Patterns nights have seen the likes of saxophonist Kamasi Washington and bassist Thundercat hop on stage, while Hoxton’s Troy Bar jam recently hosted the US R&B singer Bilal.
If you didn’t manage to get tickets to a mega-festival, it’s always worth checking if their stages are live-streamed online. You’ll already know that the BBC keeps its Glastonbury content on iPlayer for 30 days, but Coachella also uploads main stage sets to YouTube; more recently, Barcelona’s Primavera streamed its sets via Prime Video.
Finally, if you are desperate to grab tickets for a hotly anticipated show, sign up to your favourite artist’s fan mailing list once their tour is announced for presale or priority access tickets, often after pre-ordering their new album. It’s a small price to pay to beat the frenzy of a 9am Ticketmaster queue. Ammar Kalia
Stage
The Stage recently revealed that three plays charged above £200 for their top-priced ticket in the past year, and the most expensive seat at the musical Cabaret was more than £300. Other shows are in high demand: Tom Holland’s turn in Romeo and Juliet sold out in only two hours.
But you don’t need Swiftie levels of dedication to secure theatre tickets, especially if you can be spontaneous. For high-demand shows, call the box office for returns. People’s plans change, and unused press tickets may be released. Some theatres, and booking apps such as Dice, let you join a waiting list, so you’ll get a call or notification if tickets are returned.
For West End shows, there is the tradition of day tickets or rush tickets, where you can find seats for big plays and musicals for about £25 to £30 – but only if you can go that day. Call the theatre or look on apps such as TodayTix to see what’s available. For a bit more notice, lotteries help you find tickets for £10 to £35. There is tougher competition for the likes of Hamilton, but newer shows such as Operation Mincemeat give good odds; I overheard one super-fan saying she’d managed to see it 18 times.
Not all shows sell as well as Hamilton, so seat-filling services – try SeatFillersUK – boost attendance via free tickets. Sign up to one and you might get into a new dance production or see a big-name comedian.
Lots of theatres recognise the need for affordable tickets, too. South London’s Battersea Arts Centre has a “pay what you can” policy, Newcastle upon Tyne’s Alphabetti theatre offers £3 “no questions” tickets, and south London’s Old Vic has £10 tickets for previews.
Comedy is still one of the most affordable artforms – if you avoid arena shows. Comedians need to test jokes, so try new-material nights where you can watch up-and-coming talent and TV faces for a few pounds. If your favourite comedian is about to go on tour, or to the Edinburgh festival fringe, they’ll be doing work-in-progress gigs (WIPs) to polish their show – often in their local comedy club. Prices for these start as low as £1 at London’s Top Secret Comedy Club, to a few quid more elsewhere. Comedy fans are also spoilt for choice with fringe festivals. Some, like east London’s ARG comedy festival, let you purchase a weekend ticket and cram in as many shows as possible for a set price. Then you’ll find individual tickets for £6 to £15 at Aberystwyth comedy festival, Leicester comedy festival, and Falmouth Cringe. Even at the pricey Edinburgh fringe, many acts designate two-for-one days; you can save by booking in advance, or by visiting the Half Price Hut on the day. Rachael Healy
Film
Film used to be one of the cheapest entertainment options available, with a cinema ticket in 1974 costing an average of 50p (about £4.50 in today’s money) – true entertainment for the many, even when you take inflation into account. That is no longer the case, with a pair of tickets plus snacks and a drink often costing north of £25. Luckily, there are ways to see films for less.
Perhaps the idea of a film festival conjures glitzy images of celebrities and red carpets. But in truth, their purpose is often more egalitarian. Audience-focused film festivals such as the London film festival, Picturehouse Central’s Sundance London, and Glasgow film festival attract celebs and press, but at their core are about the public, with programmes designed to make attending as accessible as possible. The Edinburgh international film festival (15 to 21 August) is introducing Pay What You Can screenings this year.
Regular cinema-going needn’t cost an arm and a leg, either. Curzon Cinemas’ Cult membership is £25 a month and gives you access to a ticket every single day to see whatever you want, while east London’s Barbican, in addition to its parent-and-baby, seniors and relaxed screenings (all £6), has started running Pay What You Can screenings in response to the cost-of-living crisis. Most cinema chains offer something for younger punters, too, with under 25s offers typically in the £3 to £6 a ticket bracket.
Another great big-screen hack is outdoor cinema, which is often free and tends to be less fussed about people bringing their own food and drinks, too.
One more film-adjacent treat, that often costs less than you’d think, is film-related exhibitions. The BFI, for example, is running an show showcasing the animation studio Laika, the creative force behind the likes of Coraline, displaying physical puppets, sets, costumes and props from its archive (BFI Southbank, London, 12 August to 1 October). Price of admission? Absolutely nothing.
And what of the small screen? Illegal options aside, there are still plenty of places to access film for nothing or nearly nothing, from the BBC iPlayer and BFI iPlayer, to more commercial screening platforms. The coolest of these options is probably Mubi, which has a wide offering of arthouse classics new and old (it is now showing Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days and Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex), and often runs promotions such as a £1-per-month offer for your first three months. These platforms are a particularly useful hack for anyone living in a part of the UK without an arthouse cinema – which is to say half the country. Catherine Bray
Art
“Art is for everyone”, declared the New York graffiti great Keith Haring, and in the UK, it really can be. Since 2001, thanks to the last Labour government, our national museums have charged no entrance fees. That includes world-beating art collections, from London’s National Gallery with Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks among its Renaissance masterpieces, to Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which boasts Rembrandt’s bewitching Man in Armour. If there’s a specially programmed show, be it Tate Liverpool’s Brickworks exhibition from 31 July or Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael at London’s Royal Academy of Arts this autumn, there are membership schemes available, such as the Art Fund National Art Pass or Tate Members, where a one-off payment includes year-round entry or discounted tickets.
Civic-minded free programming such as artist-run creative workshops for children and young people are now a museum staple, but there are events to keep adult culture vultures busy most nights also. The annual Glasgow international art festival’s Gatherings programme for instance, includes lectures, discussion groups, artists in conversation, music and performance. This year’s edition featured a dining event exploring the origins of “slave cuisine”, with Creole and Caribbean recipes.
What many don’t realise too, is that beyond the world of public institutions, private commercial galleries are also free to visit. In London, you can explore the swank and swagger of blue-chip contemporary operations in Mayfair, be it the bunker-like White Cube Mason’s Yard (featuring leading Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo in autumn) or the huge glass-fronted showrooms of Hauser & Wirth (currently showing sculpture by the great non-conformist Isa Genzken). Or you can discover fledgling talents in discreet upstairs spaces hidden behind anonymous doors, and you won’t pay a penny for your viewing pleasure. They’re shops after all. Just like museums, private galleries seek to expand the cultural conversation, and performances, talks, tours and screenings staged to this end are again often free.
You don’t need to travel to metropolitan centres to see top-billing art, either. The Angel of the North is a national icon, but there are lesser-known greats to discover in unexpected places. The recently crowned “sculpture town”, of Harlow in Essex, began installing 100-plus artworks, including sculpture by Elisabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth and Moore, in the 1950s. Frontrunner of the seaside art festival, Folkestone, has the country’s largest ever-evolving art trail, including Cornelia Parker’s mermaid and Lubaina Himid’s jelly mould pavilion on its beaches.
Even at auction houses, anyone can look around the highlights going under the hammer. At Sotheby’s this July that includes work by Tracey Emin and Warhol, and at Christie’s you can see exquisite illuminated manuscripts. While some artworks’ price tags make for intimidating headlines, once you know where to look, enjoying art costs nothing. Skye Sherwin
• This article was amended on 15 July 2024. An earlier version said that Tate Liverpool was showing an exhibition called Summer of Love; this was put on in 2005.
