For people who like doing things in public that are normally done in darkened rooms behind closed doors, there is now Secret Cinema. A surprise film screened in unusual and unexpected venues, Secret Cinema launched this month in London with a preview of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. 300 people braved the damp and cold of London Bridge’s railway arches to see it, though I think I’ll wait for a fairer season.

Secret Cinema isn’t exactly a secret (appearing in an array of newspapers and magazines) and it may not be a new idea, but it’s more professionally organised than the guerilla rooftop screenings of the 90s and there is something so very social about al fresco cinema. Sign up here and have your picnic basket, friends/sweetheart and cushions at the ready for future dates.

Going to see Michael Clark has always had the same feel about it as going to a gig, partly because of his choice of music and earlier associations with The Fall, and partly just because he’s a glorious bad ass troublemaker and you can’t help but be excited about what he might do next. Yesterday was the opening night at the Barbican of his extraordinary Stravinsky Project - a choreographed trilogy to the composer’s Apollo, The Rite of Spring and Les Noces.

Featuring versions of Leigh Bowery’s toilet costume, a topless woman with a Hitler moustache, and a knitted wedding dress in the shape of a condom (a 1965 Yves Saint Laurent creation), Clark always manages to elicit laughter from an audience.

Just like I am Kurious Oranj (see video clip), these three pieces are performed to live music with the Britten Sinfonia and New London Chamber Choir adding to the electricity. You don’t just watch his dancers perform, like you don’t just listen to live music; it’s an all-encompassing experience. When it’s good, as it was last night, you can feel your brain open up as if you’ve got a flip-top head with lots of torches inside jiggling their lights around the room.

He makes fleeting appearances in his own productions these days but this provides space to prove that his work as a choreographer is infused with the charisma and attitude that always made him so tantalising as a dancer.

For the first time ever, the four paintings that make up Walter Sickert’s ‘Camden Town murder series’ have been brought together with many other of his nude studies. The paintings, many from private collections, are being shown at the Courtauld Gallery in the lovely Somerset House until 20 january 2008.

Sickert is said to have begun the series after becoming fascinated by the murder of a local prostitute, Emily Dimmock, found in bed with her throat cut. There is nothing so grisly in his paintings, but a more anonymous threat both in terms of the smudged, dark shadows and obscured features of the women and their customers and also in the conditions in which they live and work. There is of course a great tradition of artists using prostitutes as models. The great beauty in Sickert’s paintings is his interest in the social truth of their lives, he doesn’t dress his nudes up as something they are not.

Recently poor old Walter (or ’sick heart’ as someone in my art history class used to call him) was in danger of becoming less well known for his work and more famous for the accusation made by Patricia Cornwell that he was Jack the Ripper. This article in The Guardian goes into more detail about that. Sickert’s attraction to the underbelly of London life always shone a dark light on his reputation but whether or not you believe in the theories, what cannot be denied is his importance as both artist and social commentator.

the make lounge is a fairly recent and very welcome addition to the london after-work circuit. “meet people make stuff” is their call to action and they run a selection of workshops through the year using eco-friendly techniques and materials.

top of the list for new year is this japanese binding workshop where, for £45 including materials, you can make your own 2008 diary, scrapbook or notepad. ideal for making a note of all the other things you want to make and do next year.

check out sister site make london for a lively blog on lots of other crafty things and people in london.

If you’ve ever sworn yourself blind after reading in the Metro about some blighter getting a Hockney for the price of a couple of curries then do something about it and register now for RCA Secret 2007.

RCA Secret is the annual show where 2,500 original postcard-sized artworks go on sale for £40 and the money raised keeps starving young artists in supplies and whatnot.

The secret bit is you don’t know who has done what, so you’ll only find out after purchase whether you’ve bought an established artist or one of the RCA’s undergraduates. Unless you like kicking yourself it’s best not to try and guess which one will make you a fast buck at Sotheby’s and just buy what you like.

autumn in london has got to be one of the best seasons in the world. september is design month, october is dance, and november is london jazz festival month. the line-up for this year has just been unveiled and i’m facing bankruptcy and some serious decisions already.

kicking things off on my shortlist is cesaria evora, who for so long was the only voice from cape verde heard in the west. she’s the grand dame of morna - a music that mixes african blues with european folk - and has a bittersweet sound that sends tingles up the spine.

then, there’s orchestra baobab from senegal who are playing three nights at the jazz cafe. these fellas make dead men dance so my only quandary is will i be up to that much jostling and jigging about at 33 weeks pregnant? i reckon the only way to find out is to go and see. i can calm myself and take a load off with some funky chair dancing at the barbican on the 20 november, grooving to the steve reid ensemble. from james brown to sun ra, steve reid has drummed with the best. he’s supported by the heritage orchestra so i may not be in my seat for long.

ah well, i’m bound to get a break at paco de lucia on the 22nd. i’ve seen paco a few times, both in london and in spain and i have to say, if you get the chance, see him in spain. it’s like choosing between semi-skimmed and full fat milk. there’s nothing wrong with semi-skimmed but full fat’s got the flavour. still, he’s always worth witnessing and the listing says he’s bringing three flamenco singers with him and i’m hoping one of them will be duquende who sang with camaron de la isla as a child and often rocks up to support el mastro on tour.

here lies another quandary, as miss marva whitney plays the jazz cafe on the same night. so it’s either sit down and bliss out with paco or more jump-jive jiggling with james brown’s soulsister no. 1. it’s not often i get to choose between two such jewels so i shan’t grumble.

finally (for me anyway) i’ll be going to worship at the church of 1950s harlem sax as sonny rollins lifts the roof off the barbican. that’s my prediction people. you may have thought they’d all departed, but sonny - a man miles davis called the greatest tenor ever - is still kicking it at 77 years old. here’s some stills of sonny back in the day and looking every inch as smooth right now. i cannot wait.