London is a wonderful place to be a student. With countless museums, theatres, music venues, and galleries, there’s really something for everyone! Whether you’re firmly plugged into the artistic and cultural side of the city or if the last ‘artsy’ thing you did was go clubbing (there’s music, it counts!), there’s always more to discover. Now I know what you’re thinking - supporting the arts is expensive - and you’d be right - going to see a West End show can set you back £35+ and smaller museums can be extortionate! Well worry not, I’ve scoured every corner of the internet to find every deal, discount, offer, and hack available to students (and healthcare students specifically) so that you can discover London’s arts and culture scene without discovering that you’ve dipped into your overdraft.

For Healthcare Students

Blue Light Card

The Blue Light Card is a discount card available to NHS, EMS, social care, and armed force workers and students. It’s really easy to sign up - all you have to do is provide your NHS email (and if you don’t have one already, get one! It’s invaluable in clinical years and you’ll need it once you start working anyway!). There are thousands of discounts available through the card - restaurants, clothing stores, hotel booking, gym memberships - but amongst all of that, there are some pretty cool arts/ culture deals such as:

10% off booking theatre tickets through SEE
10% off booking theatre tickets through Theatre Desk
10% off booking theatre tickets through AGT
3 months free Spotify Premium

Blue Light Tickets

Not to be confused with the Blue Light Card, Blue Light Tickets is a service that provides free and discounted tickets to NHS and emergency staff. The process to sign up is similar (although less intensive) to the Blue Light Card, and new opportunities for free tickets are posted every day, so make sure to keep checking the website! The website offers tickets for comedy shows, theatre, music, sports, and more!

Theatre

National Theatre - Friday Rush

The National Theatre, which is currently showing ‘Phaedra’ and ‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’ at the National and ‘The Lehman Trilogy’ at the Gillian Lynne, offers £10 tickets for shows throughout the week released every Friday at 1pm. There are a limited number of tickets available so if you’re not on the site at 1pm exactly, the chances of snagging discounted tickets is low!

RSC - £10 Tickets for Matilda The Musical

In collaboration with TikTok, the RSC offers £10 tickets for full time students and people between the ages 14-25, for Matilda The Musical, currently at the Cambridge theatre! To claim these tickets (there are 16 available per performance) all you have to do is head over to the Cambridge Theatre box office at 10am on the day you want to see the show. Make sure you have proof of age ID and be warned that you can only buy one ticket per person!

Theatre Royal Haymarket - Masterclass

Masterclass, a scheme for 16-30-year-olds by the Theatre Royal Haymarket, is free to sign up for and regularly offers £5 West End tickets as well as workshops, events, and masterclasses by professionals in the industry (the next one is by Phoebe Waller-Bridge!)

Southwark Playhouse - Pay As You Go

The most expensive upfront option on this list - Southwark Playhouse, an Off-West End venue, offers a ‘Pay As You Go’ scheme, where you receive a balance of 5 tickets for £75 upfront, which comes to exactly £15 per ticket. Southwark Playhouse is currently showing ‘Smoke’, a play starring Meghan Martin (of Camp Rock fame).

Almeida Theatre - 25 and Under Scheme

The Almeida Theatre, a prestigious off-West End venue in Islington offers £5 tickets to anybody aged 25 or younger! Tickets are limited to 2 per person per show but it’s very simple to get - all you need to do is show your ID when collecting the tickets at the box office. The venue is currently home to the play ‘Women, Beware the Devil’.

Royal Court Theatre - Monday Tickets

Released at 9am every Monday morning, The Royal Court Theatre offers reduced tickets, as little as £12 each, to their programming of the same evening. Currently, the theatre is showing the plays ‘Sound of the Underground’ and ‘Graceland’.

Young Vic - Lucky Dip + 25 and Under Scheme

The Young Vic has a few different ways to access theatre on a budget. The least expensive is their Lucky Dip tickets, which are only £10. These tickets are bought the same way as any other ticket on their website but you won’t know until you get to the venue where your seat is (or even if you get a seat, some of the tickets are for standing room!). If you don’t fancy potentially standing for 2 hours, there’s also a 25 and under scheme, similar to that of the Almeida theatre, where a limited number of tickets are available to people 25 and under for £12.

TodayTix Rush Tickets

Almost every day at 10am, the ticket website TodayTix opens up Rush Tickets for select West End and Off-West End shows. The standard price of rush tickets are £20 - £30, but some can be found for as low as £15. Rush tickets are in limited availability and can be located anywhere in the theatre, so it’s a bit of a gamble, but considering the price, it’s almost always a great deal!

Seat-Filler Services

There are countless seat-filler services in London, and all you have to do is sign up and pay a small (£5- 10) registration fee! Once you do, you get access to the cheapest tickets for Off- West End, Cabaret, Burlesque, and Music shows on the market! There are too many seat- filler services to name but a few that I’ve personally used (and had great experiences with) are Central Tickets, Play by Play, and The Audience Club.

And that’s most of the big healthcare student-specific and theatre discounts in the city! Of course in a city as massive as London, there are loads more opportunities and price reductions up for grabs, but this list is a solid start! Catch the next issue of the Circadian for a continuation of this article: discounts, offers, and hacks in museums, galleries, and musicvenues!