Three Questions We're Trying to Answer With One Click

Every week, the same conversation plays out in houses across the country. Sometimes it's Thursday evening. Sometimes it's Saturday morning with a cup of tea going cold. But the questions are always the same.

"Is there anything free on this weekend?"

"What can we do with the kids?"

"What's on over Easter / half term / the bank holiday?"

I know, because I've asked all three roughly every week since my first son was born. And every time, the answer involved opening a dozen tabs, scrolling past events with three words of description and no useful detail, and eventually giving up and going to the same park we went to last weekend.

So we built something to fix that.

Introducing Top Picks

Top Picks is a new section on Near Here that takes those exact questions and gives you an answer in a single click. No searching, no filtering, no scrolling through pages of maybes.

Right now, there are three:

Free Things This Weekend does what it says on the tin. The best free events near you, this weekend, with enough detail to actually be useful.

Families This Weekend is the one I personally needed most. Ten family-friendly picks, near you, with proper descriptions and decent venues. No mystery listings that tell you nothing and leave you guessing whether it's worth the drive.

What's On Over Easter is the first of what will become a regular thing: curated round-ups for specific dates and occasions, built ahead of time so you're not scrambling on Good Friday morning. These seasonal pages tend to fill out as venues publish their plans, so it's worth checking back as the date gets closer.

Not every event makes the cut

The main Near Here listings show you everything we find. That's the point of the site: we check hundreds of local websites and surface the events the big platforms miss. But "everything" includes a lot of events with thin descriptions, vague timings, or not quite enough detail to recommend confidently.

Top Picks is the filter. Here's what an event needs to make it onto one of these pages:

It has to be near you. These pages use your location to keep things properly local, rather than sending you off on a cross-county expedition.

It has to be on the right dates.The weekend pages show this weekend. The Easter page shows Easter. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many "what's on" lists don't manage this.

It has to come from a local gem or a curated venue.These are the events that took real effort to surface. The ones from small venue websites, community centres, churches, and village halls that no other aggregator picks up. If it's already plastered all over the big platforms, you're less likely to need us for that one.

It has to have proper detail.A good description. A clear time and date. Enough information that you can decide whether it's worth going without having to click through to three other sites. Events with three words and a shrug don't make the cut.

More magazine shelf, less jumble sale

The way I think about it: the main site is the full what's on guide. Top Picks is the "if you only have thirty seconds, start here" version. A shorter list of stronger stuff, for people who want a quick answer to a simple question.

And because it's all powered by the same data we're already collecting, it stays fresh. The Free Things This Weekend page on Saturday morning will look different to the one on the following Saturday, because the events will be different. The picks evolve as the listings do.

What's coming next

Easter is the first seasonal page, but it won't be the last. Half term round-ups, bank holiday guides, rainy day plans for when the weather has a wobble. The idea is to build a set of pages that answer the questions people actually ask, at the moment they're asking them.

If there's a question you keep asking that we should be answering, let us know. We're building this around real life, not a product roadmap.

— Jon, founder of Near Here (whose Saturday mornings are slightly less chaotic now)