For just one day, lots of venues will all join together to do lots of things, meaning that even with the fastest feet and most fortunate timing, you’re bound to miss out on most them.
Sorry for the whinge, and while I appreciate having a “festival” does make managing a joint marketing campaign somewhat easier and gets more publicity, it does also mean that it’s nigh on impossible for people to see and do the majority of what is put on.
As it happens, most of the venues aren’t really doing anything particularly special, being mostly limited to putting out an object that isn’t often seen, or providing some family friendly entertainments.
It is however a chance to see those rarely seen documents and books, so with some decent planning you should be able to fit in a rush around venues to see them.
The full list of venues and events is on the Historic England website.
Slightly disappointed for another reason. Perhaps more venues will come on board but looking at info from Historic England most places for the moment are in Central London – what about the rest of London? All the local authority museums and archives? Slightly disappointed and even more so since I won’t be around that day to visit those participating .
HE replied to my similar comment to them on FB:
Hi Kath, thanks for your feedback – we hope to get more organisations across the city involved in the future.
I rapidly gave up on digging down to try to find actual events happening.
I started writing “here’s my personal pick of the best”. By the time I finished clicking on each event my list was empty.