Bad news, the weather isn’t set to hold for the Bank Holiday – according to the not so trusty BBC Weather website, rain’s a comin’. Fear not. Here at Handpicked we’ve tracked down lots of things you can do that involve less picnicking and more sightseeing. There are some cracking exhibitions on at the moment.

The V&A (Handpicked’s culture fix of choice) has its most pre-booked ticket exhibition to date, the much acclaimed Quilts 1700-2010. I’ve been meaning to go and see it for weeks and I think it’s really about time I did. It’s the perfect moment for it to be around as I am sure the exhibitors thought of when they put it together. Everything thrifty, second-hand (other people like to use the term ‘vintage’ if they wish to disassociate themselves with other people’s cast offs) and generally cheap has all been hugely popular and fashionable since this damned credit crunch. Quilts are the epitome of all of this – made of anything and everything; they can brighten up a room, take a lot of time to build up rescuing you from other more expensive hobbies and are completely personal allowing people to show off creativity and haberdashery skills. Click here for tickets and info.

Yesterday, the V&A also opened another exhibition to the public a few doors down at Blythe House near Olympia (click here for a map). The Concise Dictionary of Dress, I don’t really think one can easily explained; as they say, seeing is believing. From what I gather it’s a walk through of a huge collection put together by the V&A and Artangel aimed to portray a wealth of emotion and metaphors to the visitor. An interesting aspect of this is that it has been put together by a psychoanalyst (Adam Phillips) and a Fashion Curator (Judith Clark). The experience is made of beautiful objects and glimpses of the inner workings of fashion and psychoanalysis and what can be defined in this media. Click here for tickets and info.

The next is a bit of a cheat on the Bank Holiday but there’s only so much culture one person can take. The Elephant Parade in London starts on the 3^rd of May and involves a huge cast of artists and designers. Each paint/sculpt/populate an elephant and their works of art are strewn all over the city for the enjoyment of the normal folk. The whole point of the exercise is to draw attention to the endangered Asian elephant (the one with the small ears as Time Out so aptly put it). Artists range from Alice Temperley and Cartier to De Beauvoir Primary School in Hackney. Other names in the menagerie are: Diane von Furstenberg, Kids Company, Lulu Guinness, Matthew Williamson, Nina Campbell, Sir Paul Smith, Tommy Hilfiger and Sir Terrence Conran. The exhibition runs from the 3^rd of May until the beginning of July when the elephants will all club together in the grounds of the Royal Hospital of Chelsea from June 23^rd until July 2^nd and after this they are lent to the greedy hands of Sotheby’s where they will be auctioned off to the rest of the rich and famous. Click here for info.