So nobody’s going anywhere for the foreseeable future – except now, perhaps into somebody’s back garden – but luckily, lots of kind people have taken it on themselves to make sure that we can still get a (24-hour-a-day-if-required) fix of art, culture, music and books. Here’s a round-up of some of the best.

THEATRE, OPERA, BALLET

The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is beaming opera and ballet around the world, with a schedule of free broadcasts and live content. Check out the Royal Ballet’s Peter and the Wolf and The Metamorphosis, as well as the Royal Opera’s Così fan tutte and much more on the ROH Facebook and YouTube channels.

Ditto for the New York’s Met Opera – catch their productions here – string of pearls optional.

The Bolshoi Ballet is streaming previous productions including The Nutcracker and Spartacus on its YouTube channel with more to come – pull the curtains and pretend it’s Christmas. Staying with Christmas, you can watch the English National Ballet’s Swan Lake here.

The Irish National Opera has also put several of its productions online, including Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice – full listing here. And catch Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro from Glyndebourne here.

Slava’s Snowshow is one of the most beautiful pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen (twice). You can’t recreate the magic of turning a theatre into a giant snowstorm/playground for giant floating balloons in an online screening, but you can enjoy the gentle humour and magic of the show. Try this as a taster and when we’re all released from house arrest again, check out a live performance somewhere in the world.

The Guardian has put together a great list of ‘Quarantine soirées’ – classical music and opera to stream at home from around the world, updated regularly.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre has over 130 filmed productions on its Globe Player video-on-demand service, including Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance (love Mark Rylance), Jonathan Pryce in the Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Michelle Terry.

The Globe is showing past productions for free on its YouTube channel, releasing a new show every week at 7pm. Each will be available from the date of release for 14 days. The productions are:

Hamlet (2018), Romeo and Juliet (2009), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), The Two Noble Kinsmen (2018), The Winter’s Tale (2018) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (2019) – plus, in a late addition, Macbeth (2020) has just gone live now.

You can also watch all of the Complete Walk series on its video-on-demand service. These are 37 short 10-minute films recorded with an all-star cast and shot on location, commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

Latest shows just announced for the National Theatre’s YouTube channel in May and June include A Streetcar Named Desire, Coriolanus and This House. Get full details here.

Here’s a list of free musicals and plays from FilmedOnStage that you can currently stream – updated daily.

And What’s On Stage has also done a very useful round-up of stage shows, musicals and opera you can watch online for free.

Ireland’s Rough Magic Theatre has just put How to Keep an Alien, by Sonya Kelly, online, filmed at the Dublin Fringe Festival. And you can watch Druid Theatre’s award-winning production of The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Abbey Theatre and Royal Court Theatre’s co-production of Cyprus Avenue by David Ireland, starring Stephen Rea, is now available to watch online here.

Staying in the country, Dear Ireland is a series of 50 monologues created in self-isolation by 50 writers and 50 actors, exploring life during the Covid-19 crisis, commissioned by the Abbey Theatre. Streamed on YouTube over four nights and online for the next six months, it features actors and writers including Brendan Gleeson, Edna O’Brien, Cathy Belton and Joseph O’Connor and asks the question, what should Ireland write on a postcard to itself?

MUSEUMS

Why not pop over into an Irish museum while you’re at it. A whole load of them have just put themselves online for virtual tours here – top tip, the Chester Beatty Museum is a beaut.

Have a browse around behind closed doors in the BBC series Museums in Quarantine, featuring Tate Britain, the British Museum, Warhol at Tate Modern and Young Rembrant at The Ashmolean in Oxford.

Somerset House  has released a brand-new virtual tour of its exhibition Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi. It’s the first time that the public will be able to see inside this original show from home, exploring the colourful cultural legacy of mushrooms and their powerful potential in the planet’s survival, featuring works from the likes of Beatrix Potter, Carsten Höller and Tom Dixon.

FILM

This could be a good time to consider a subscription to the British Film Institute – free 14-day trial and then £4.99 a month for lots of free films, plus others to rent for just £2.50. New films are being added all the time, plus there’s a substantial archive list. They have the Buena Vista Social Club – what more do you want?

The Regent Stree Cinema is also offering free membership for three months and the chance to enjoy FILM ESSENTIALS, a selection of specially curated titles powered by online streaming service MUBI. Join to receive details on how to start watching films for free over the next three months.

MUSIC

NEW: Watch the London Mozart Players in action with regular recitals broadcast every week on the LMP website, YouTube and Facebook, as well as interviews with leading musical lights including pianist Howard Shelley and jazz singer Claire Martin.

NEW: There’s more classical music on demand here, courtesy of Bachtrack – and catch the Royal College of Music concerts here.

NEW: The Sligo County Fleadh has been cancelled of course but they’re streaming some live music sessions instead this coming weekend, from May 29.

Billy Bragg live streamed a concert from New York at the start of May, featuring Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Steve Earle, The Indigo Girls, KT Tunstall,  Loudon Wainwrigh and many more. It was a paid-for event – but here he is playing New York’s Bowery Ballroom last September.

A treat for trad lovers. Irish language TV station TG4 is running a 6-week musical tour of the west coast of Ireland every Sunday at 9.30pm, with legendary traditional musicians, father and son, Breanndán and Cormac Ó Beaglaoich – Slí na mBeaglaoich (Journey of the Begleys). Travelling up the west coast from Kerry to Donegal in their 40-year-old camper van, they’ll team up with friends for tunes and explore the landscape, musical and physical. I’m so enjoying this every week and – of course – Sligo was the highlight.

NEW: For more great Irish music, catch Mary Coughlan gigging in her garden – wrapped in a blanket! – with her band, raising money for Bray Women’s Refuge. And Glen Hansard was recorded live in the National Library of Ireland – not sure if I enjoyed looking at Glen or the books more.

In April, Jack Lukeman launched what would have been the start of his tour with a live show from his sitting room – love this and great to see the comments pouring in from all over the world. (The start of this is particularly hilarious – you have to watch it!) The good news is that it went so well he’s now doing live shows (from his sitting room) every Saturday night at 8pm.  He’s already done Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash tributes, an ’80s night, folk night and songs from the 27 club. He’s on a break now for a few weeks, back on June 20 with a Bowie night.

Back in the real world – if it still exists, anyone looked recently? – Jack and Mary Coughlan are doing a show in London on Saturday 26 September in Shoreditch Town Hall. I’ll be first in as soon as the door opens.

Jack did it, so Andrew Lloyd Webber thought he would too. He’s releasing a new musical every Friday on this YouTube channel, each one will be available for 48 hours and first up is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Catch Andrea Bocelli singing from Duomo di Milano, Milan Cathedral, here. This solo performance was been created as a message of hope and healing to Italy and the world.

Over 200 musicians have come together to share their music, with concerts broadcast at 8pm on YouTube (brainchild of the artists’ agency Weltenklang, donate to the project here). With performers from Ireland, Scotland, Austria, Portugal, Canada, Louisiana, Makedonia, Iceland, Mali, Sweden, California, Romania and other exotic places taking part, you’ll join them in their homes for the session – because, these days, there’s nowhere like home.

Catch some singing – here’s a virtual performance of Cyndi Lauper’s True Colours, recorded by the Camden Voices choir from their individual homes. More videos on the way they say.

ART

NEW: Take a virtual art tour, courtesy of Art Fund; options include tours of the British Museum, the Courtauld, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland.

NEW: Delve into the minds of the Impressionists at the Royal Academy of Arts, with its Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse exhibition, guided by expert curators, artists and garden enthusiasts.

NEW: You can also explore two of the Royal Academy’s recent Hockney exhibitons – A Bigger Picture in 2012 and 82 Portraits and One Still-Life in 2016. I ended up seeing A Bigger Picture shortly before midnight one Saturday as the gallery opened up all hours to meet the demand for tickets. One of the best late-night Saturdays I’ve had in London.

NEW: Speaking of late nights, Uniqlo Tate Lates have gone online now, starting from this weekend – a chance to listen to talks, poetry and music, create your own artworks and even do a bit of meditation.

NEW: Or just go to the Barbican.

You can browse beautiful paintings at the National Gallery – stare at Caravaggio to your heart’s content, I know I do. The gallery has also put together several curated collections to watch on video – take a look at paintings of people working from home, enjoy a tour of art history’s female protagonists or spend a day in the countryside.

Take a tour of the new Andy Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern with curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran – the launch of this show was one of my last trips out to the real world. You can also tour the Aubrey Beardsley exhibition at Tate Britain – also excellent.

The Tate’s collection is here – both contemporary and historic. There are loads of great art projects for kids here – and everything from quizzes to crafts here.

While the BMW Tate Live Exhibition has been cancelled in real time, one of the artists programmed for this year’s event has created an online work instead, performed and filmed in the empty Tanks at Tate Modern after the gallery closed. Watch My Body, My Archive, a performance re-invented for this unquie situation, by Congolese choreographer and dance artist Faustin Linyekula.

And you don’t need to stay in the UK obvs; the Uffizi gallery in Florence holds nearly a third of the world’s art treasures and the biggest collection of Renaissance art on the planet – and you can look at it here.

Browse the works of Frida Kahlo here.

Or re-create your own art at home – this one is my favourite!

BOOKS & KID’S ACTIVITIES

A fantastic piece of news – The Hay Literary Festival has gone digital this year, with a programme that is running from now until May 31. There will be talks, readings, author Q&As and special events, including a reading of the works of Wordsworth by a celebrity line-up including Hilary Mantel, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, Margaret Atwoood and more. All of the events are free but you do have to register – and while there are thousands of places available, some of the more popular events – such as Hilary Mantel talking about her latest novel The Mirror and The Light – are filling up fast. All are available to view afterwards for a limited amount of time. See the full programme and catch up with previous events here.

Galway’s Cuirt International Festival of Literature also went online for the first time in its history this year, with some excellent readings and talks from, among others, Anne Enright, Sara Baume, Sinead Gleeson and Lisa McInerney – catch them all here.

You won’t be able to go to your local library any more for books, but you can borrow ebooks and audiobooks from thousands of libraries online using your library card with the Libby app or at Borrowbox. If you don’t have a library card you can still join online while they are closed – just sign up here.

More places for free books – try Project Gutenberg, a library of over 60,000 ebooks which you can download or read online. And for another 16 free book options, Lifewire has put together a list of the best websites here, with pros and cons for each.

Internet Archive has just put 1.4m new books online for free browsing, from study support and educational texts to the latest novels.

If you’re looking for kids’ books, David Walliams is releasing 30 free audio books for children. And here’s a list of children’s authors doing read-alouds and activities.

Also for kids, some very enterprising person on FB has just published a timed list of daily activities – quite fancy a few of them myself:

9am PE with Joe Wicks
10am Maths with Carol Vorderman
11am English with David Walliams
12pm Cooking with Jamie Oliver
1pm Music with Myleene Klass
1.30pm Dance with Darcey Bussell
2.00pm History with Dan Snow (free for 30-days)
4.00pm Home Economics with Theo Michaels (Mon/Wed/Fri)

Of course, if you want to support independent booksellers during this incredibly difficult time, lots of them are now doing deliveries – some by skateboard – and they need your money more than Amazon.

GET CREATIVE OR ‘GO’ PLACES

NEW: Pop along to Ireland’s Bloom festival this weekend, Sunday May 31, with workshops on cooking and gardening as well as a craft beer and farmhouse cheese tasting, not quite sure how that’s going to work out…

NEW: If you’re living in Croydon, you might want to contribute to the Museum of Croydon’s Lockdown Stories, reflecting the lives of Croydon residents during the COVID-19 pandemic and providing a record for future generations. If you’re not living in Croydon, you might want to seriously re-consider your life choices.

Get creative yourself – there are literally thousands of courses being released for free at the moment, everything from cookery to cricket (well, I’m not sure really about cricket – but there’s bound to be one eventually). My favourite last week was a masterclass of guitar lessons with Carlos Santana, this week I like the look of these free online art courses, thoughtfully rounded up by this kind man on YouTube.

Once you’ve progressed from learning guitar with Carlos, you can find out how to compose a film score with Hans Zimmer (did music for Inception, The Lion King, The Dark Knight) – this one is a paid-for course.

Gresham College in London has put a whole archive of lectures online – everything from mysteries of the dark cosmos to equations that have changed the world. They’ve also put a fantastic collection of lectures specifically about London up – am most looking forward to ‘The City of London in Literature’. Went to a few of their lectures in the days I could roam freely – they are really excellent (I’d like to take this chance to recommend their Christmas series).

If you really have to ‘get out’ – you can virtually wander across 825 miles of Florida’s beaches, go to Austria or – just for fun – tour the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, once the world’s most famous and expensive prison, which housed Al Capone.

NEW: Visit the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, wander around Buckingham Palace and  Kew Gardens or make the most of this quiet time in the world’s busiest tourist spots and check out everywhere from the Spanish Steps and Colosseum to St Mark’s Square and Prague’s Old Town. Here’s what New York looks like empty. And here are some eerie photos of London before and after lockdown.

Visit Highclere Castle for a tour with the lady of the house every Friday evening at 7pm, courtesy of Viking TV. The home of Lord and Lady Carnarvon, it’s better known today as the ‘real Downton Abbey’.

If you want to go even further back in history, look at prehistoric cave paintings in the Dordogne, view medieval buildings and travel through beautiful countryside here.

Why would we ever want to leave the house again?