Park Nights, Serpentine Gallery

The Serpentine Gallery Park Nights 2014 programme is set to be the hottest set of arts events this summer. Here is our pick of the crop..
The back story…
The Serpentine Gallery's annual pavilion always receives a huge amount of attention. Every year for the past fourteen, a leading designer has been invited to invent a temporary structure. Previous starchitects ‘include’ Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Oscar Niemeyer and this year the Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has taken the job (click here for our thoughts).
Strangely, whatever goes on inside the pavilion seldom receives as much attention as the building itself. It would be easy to be fooled into thinking that the Serpentine Pavilion is little more than a pop-up cafe with bells on. This is a real shame as, among those in the know, the Serpentine's summer programme is regarded as an annual must-see.
Park Nights 
For Park Nights 2014, Serpentine has invited a cohort of artists to host a series of eight site-specific events. There's a lot to choose from in the programme so it's worth checking the full listings on their website. However, there are a few stand-out events worth mentioning here. 
Ed Atkins's Synonyms: Five or six noise-making rifts
On July 11, to coincide with his exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Ed Atkins is programming an evening of talks, readings, music, screenings and performance. The night is based on the original Greek Symposium, so expect a fair amount of drinking and impassioned debate to be involved too. Judging by Atkins's past record with such projects we can expect some pretty interesting speakers to be involved.
Lina Lapelyte's Hunky Bluff
Another highlight promises to be Lina Lapelyte's Hunky Bluff on August 29. For this work, Lapelyte has selected an all-female group of singers with particularly low voices to sing pieces originally written for castrato singers.
Among artists, the Serpentine's summer programme is often seen as a good networking opportunity; here you'll see established names mingling with the up and coming. So it's the perfect place for the public to get to know artists and their work in an intimate (and spectacular) setting. Don't miss out, click below for details on other events.