Another selection of events for the weekend. If you have any suggestions for the weekends to come, please do drop us a line. Click here for a more print-friendly version.

This weekend's guide is brought to you by Liverpool - European Capital of Culture 2008. This Thursday 27 September sees the launch of the Capital of Culture programme for 2008. With over 350 events, the majority of which are free, there truly is something for everyone.

We are offering people the chance to register for tickets at liverpool08.com.

Get In The Ring
Extraordinary purveyors of the finest themed debauchery, Oh My God I Miss You return to the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club with Get In The Ring, a circus styled evening of naughtiness. Think clowns, lion tamers, ring masters, bearded ladies and showgirls and dress up to the limits of your imagination for a night of burlesque from the sensational Miss Trixie Malicious and DJ galore.

Fidgit
Fidgit residents Kid Who and Benjamin Money are joined on the decks tonight by much loved gods of the mix and stars of the moment, the Streetlife DJs. Putting most of their kith to shame, the Streetlife boys throw a storming set that burns through every available genre with a blatant and highly satisfying disrespect, filling the dancefloor with everything from indie mash-up to electro nastiness.

Polyglot Composers
A touch of class tonight, in case a frantic Friday isn't necessarily what you fancy, as the soprano Patricia Rozario concentrates her hypnotic voice on a selection of classical treasures. The hook for this evening's entertainment, odd as it is, is that all of these works are written in languages that are not their composers' own. The intriguing menu of polylingual pleasures includes Haydn's English Canzonettas, Britten's Pushkin and Taverner's Schuon Lieder.

Insomniacs Ball
Returning from this year's earlier hiccup (if the last-minute postponement of their last ball counts as a hiccup) the Insomniac chaps seem eager to make amends with a line-up that threatens to shake South London to its very foundations. A 3,000-capacity venue, with 17 bands including Pull Tiger Tail, Dead Disco and Goldie Locks, and a host of DJs including the likes of Punks Jump Up and Sebastian, this is probably the most you'll ever get from a mere tenner.

Joakim & The Eurotastics
I miss being rude about the French. But it's just so damned hard when our Gallic neighbours insist on reeling out so much inexcusably fine music. Take Joakim for example. Not content with a huge back catalogue of albums and EPs, incessant remixing, the odd art installation and his own label, his new Monsters & Silly Songs album is ruining sound systems everywhere you turn, whilst his live performances of electrorock filth are taking the world by storm. Why can't they go back to peddling garlic and insulting everyone?

Make It Stop!
Sick of all the mainstream, Hoxton Square, may-as-well-be-the-West-End, same-old same-old? But then, on the flipside, maybe you don't fancy traipsing out to the depths of Dalston to freeze at the latest car-park nu-rave. Maybe you just fancy a cracking night of fine, pretention-free electro, with a good-looking crowd, a cold beer, and maybe some half-sanitary toilets for a change. That's all. Enter Make It Stop!, out to remind East London what it used to be about: fun. Sans bullshit.

Africa Mine: Music and Movement
As part of their series on African music and film, the Arcola is showing a double bill of documentaries today: 'Suffering and Smiling' and 'Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars'. Between screenings, the entertainment moves to an Afrobeat set from Kalabash Movement residents in the bar area, but the highlight arrives after the last film when legendary Sierra Leonean guitarist Abdul Tee-Jay and DJ Nimz appear to pack the space out.

Afternoon Tea with Holly and Sadie
Tying in with Sadie Lee's exhibition of portraits, she and Holly Woodlawn, erstwhile Warhol Superstar and icon of Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side' (Holly's the one who “came from Miami FLA, hitchhiked her way across the USA,” just so you know) leads a precursor to Rupert Smith's Queer Salons at the Drill Hall with this invitation to tea. As the last of the Superstars, this is a unique chance to ask the pair a few questions and no doubt soak up some fantastically rare stories.

It Came From The Earth
A massive Sunday line-up of blues- and folk-influenced live music to wile away the end of your weekend. New young chap on the post-folk block, Eugene McGuinness, leads the pack that features the likes of Tom Hatred and the Angryband (who are actually rather lovely, if a little nuts on stage), Young Husband, Dead Like Harry, and The Maladies of Bellafontaine. Where on Earth do they find such marvelous names?

Pop Art Is
When Richard Hamilton defined the Pop Art movement and manifesto back in the '50s, its detractors undoubtedly considered it a fad, presuming it a passing rebellion of the impulsive youth, doomed to tire and disappear. Unfortunately for them, Hamilton's proclamation has survived the last half century and, as the Gagosian is keen to emphasise, Pop Art is still going strong. With a major exhibition of work form both the original set of Hamilton's peers, including Lichtenstein, Warhol and Oldenburg, and the movement's more recent practitioners like Hirst and Koons, its relevance in our media-rich, postmodern world is certainly reaffirmed. In fact, amidst the array of bright and quirky pieces on display, one cannot escape the feeling that Pop Art is more than just surviving: it still seems young, powerful and influential and thus perhaps even vital.

15th Raindance Film Festival
Now a massive 15 years old, the Raindance Film Festival is an institution with that most honourable of intentions of encouraging and supporting independent film, whether from within the UK or around the world. The Festival screens variously at the Cineworlds on Haymarket and Shaftesbury Avenue and the Rex Cinema on Rupert Street, offering the chance to catch some of the finest, freshest and most unique movies around, from features to documentaries and shorts, as well as a number of classes and workshops pertaining to the film industry. The winners of Raindance's 11 awards will be announced at the closing gala on the 7th of October, but for many of us the awards are less important than the sheer number of brilliant indie films on offer over the next week. Highlights this year include the Japanese feature The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters, the UK films Summer Scars and The Killing of John Lennon, and the unsettling American documentary Crazy Love.

Ritual Abuse
Context aside, 'Ritual Abuse at The Boys Hall' has an almost delightfully suspect ring to it. But as a consideration of ritual in contemporary art practice, exhibiting in a former Boy Scouts hall is a sly move that might just help persuade its potential audience up to Dalston and into the space. Showing work from 21 graduates and students from Goldsmiths, the RCA, Central St. Martins and the RA, the hall is virtually overflowing with the full gamut of visual media, exploring the relevance and meaning of such monolithic concepts as myth, symbolism, science, and art. No small issues here then. And, whilst there are tendencies towards the kitsch and the gothic amongst the works, given the spiritual overtones of the show's themes it's a proclivity that only helps, injecting both humour and morbidity, and sometimes a blend of the two, into the potentially intellectual territory.

Harvest Fair
As the autumn days draw around us and the frosty chill begins to creep in at the edges, its time to reap the fruits of our summer labour. Or someone else's labour, as the case may be. Pop down to St James's Park today to sample some of the fruit and vegetables that they've been growing on their 500 square metre 1940s 'Dig For Victory' replica allotments and maybe even pick up some tips on preserving the vegetables that you forgot to grow during the summer.

The Big Draw
The national launch for this month-long festival of drawing begins at 10:30am on Sunday at Bethnal Green's V&A Museum of Childhood, where Quentin Blake will release an enormous flock of paper birds to kick start it all. But the cuteness doesn't end there. With 32 organisations offering a day-long spread of drawing activities all around East London, they've organized a shuttle bus to link all the events, with its princely fare of, wait for it, yes, a drawing per ride.

Divo
Sometimes you have to give a restaurant a second chance. When I went to the opening of the much-chattered-about Ukrainian restaurant Divo last week, things, you might say, were not looking too promising.

Not only was the place named after a God-awful pop/opera crossover boyband but the owners who'd christened it had insisted on having a rather odd 'traditional buffet' of cold meats, served by girls in panto-style wench outfits.

But the building (an old bank) that Divo is housed in is just so beautiful, and so different to all the other pared down, utalitarian places that seem to be popping up everywhere, I couldn't resist another visit.

So, I went again for a proper sit-down dinner this week and feasted on salmon roe blinis, fragrant borscht (ask for the extra sour cream and secret garlic sauce) and tender veal with wild mushrooms - all in a room that's so kitsch it's fabulous, and is topped only by the bathrooms.

One tip, don't be tempted to order the Ukrainian wine - it tastes like something you might have found in the back of your granny's drinks cabinet when you were twelve that had probably been there since before you were born.