Open House Festival

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Golden Key Academy Haringey cohort

These tours are led by participant of Open City's Golden Key Academy, a course that trains insightful, engaging guides to explain London and bring its many stories to life.

This year, through our partnership with Haringey 2027, London Borough of Culture, we offered ten fully funded places to people who live or work in the borough — reflecting the diversity of Haringey itself.

Applications for the London-wide Golden Key Academy 2027 are now open. Find out more at open-city.org.uk/golden-key-academy

Join local artist Emily Wood Ahmed for a mindful walking and drawing tour around the grounds of Alexandra Palace in Haringey, North London. Through gentle walking, mindful drawing and local stories, you will discover the artists of 'Ally Pally', past and present, create your own artwork, enjoy one of London’s most spectacular panoramic views, and finish at Birch Arts Gallery in Wood Green.

Walking tour

Drink, respectability and resistance

walk/tour

This guided walking tour explores the social history of Tottenham — centred around Bruce Castle Park, Bruce Grove and Tottenham High Road — through three interconnected themes: drink, respectability and resistance. It examines how everyday spaces such as streets, homes, pubs and civic buildings were shaped by competing ideas about behaviour, morality and control.

Beyond Alexandra Palace's iconic skyline lies a collection of remarkable stories that are often overlooked. Join Linda Gyamfi, a Heritage Champion for Bruce Castle Museum & Archive and a member of the Golden Key Academy, for a journey into the forgotten stories of Alexandra Palace. We will uncover Alexandra Palace's connections to Britain's imperial past.

-, 1873

Harringay Green Lanes is one of London's most diverse streets, but it was once open farmland. This walking tour explores how the area changed over 150 years through urban development and migration. Using historic maps, old photographs and the streets around us, we will discover how different communities, especially the Kurdish community, helped shape Green Lanes into the place it is today.

Guided tour

Harringay Green Lanes eateries tour

walk/tour

This walking tour with a relaxed pace is a culturally immersive food journey through one of North London’s most vibrant and underappreciated culinary corridors. The area from Manor House to Wood Green is famous for rich Turkish, Kurdish, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, bakery, café, and family-run eateries.

What stories live inside Tottenham's streets, churches, parks and everyday places? Local legends: stories from Tottenham's streets is a unique storytelling walk that uncovers the people, places and community histories that have shaped Tottenham. Through poetry, oral history, personal memoir and local heritage, participants are invited to experience the neighbourhood through fresh eyes.

This walking tour tells the story of how migrants and local heroes played a vital part in creating the fabric of Hornsey and Crouch End. It will explore local communities, people, places, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and of course buildings and spaces; while telling the story of how the area went from a small cluster of buildings to the multi-cultural neighbourhood it is today.

Walking tour

Wolves Lane Centre

walk/tour

This is a walking tour of the three acres, three new eco buildings and the eight glass houses on the Wolves Lane Centre site. This walking tour will include visiting the Palm house with an abundance of exotic flora and fauna that houses lots of koi carp and terrapins as well as the cacti house which was started 18 years ago.

Practice Architecture and StudioGil, 2025