This week, The London Standard is unveiling The Standard 100, a list of the top hundred people shaping the capital in 2024
The list contains multiple categories including science and medicine, media and fashion, sport, food, business and much more.
Today the Standard can reveal those named among the categories for Music, Culture, Art, Stage, Screen and Podcasts.
London is known throughout the world for its extraordinary culture and each member of this list has contributed to making the city a more exciting, interesting and enticing place to be.
For music, there’s Charli XCX who dominated a whole season when she turned the summer Brat, to Glastonbury headliner Dua Lipa and London icon Stormzy, and not forgetting the rocket man himself, Sir Elton John.
We celebrate the figures leading some of our biggest, world-renowned cultural institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts first ever female president.
In the art world, there are the gallerists that continue to shape cultural tastes to artists that have gone from enfant terribles to national treasures such as Tracey Emin.
On screen we are lucky to be blessed with acting, and indeed campaigning talents of stars including Riz Ahmed and Idris Elba and many of the film stars have headed to London’s biggest stages from Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, to Daisy Edgar-Jones.
And of course there are those reshaping broadcasting in the podcast world. Truly London stands alone in the breadth, depth and quality of its culture.
Music
Charli XCX, Singer-songwriter
No one has had more impact on London, or indeed anywhere in the Western world in 2024. She is the conversational talking point; what you think of Brat entirely determines where you fit in the social order. Although Charli lives in LA for most of the year, London is home to her largest and most loyal fanbase (read: party-loving gays).
Sir Elton John and David Furnish, musical power couple
At 77, Elton John continues to inspire and captivate along with his husband Furnish. A mentor sans parallel, he helped kickstart the careers of Ed Sheeran and SG Lewis — redefining the London landscape in the process. He is also one of the world’s leading philanthropists, raising more than £500 million via his foundation to help fight Aids.
Dua Lipa, Singer-songwriter
With her newsletter Service95, this year’s Glastonbury headliner is spinning plates not just in music but in media: telling us what to read and where to get the best olive oil sorbet (Folderol in Paris). We may have given her latest album three stars, but everything about her is a five-star act.
Elliot Grainge, CEO of Atlantic Music Group
The new boss of Atlantic presides over arguably the most covetable music empire of the moment, with artists like Charli XCX and Fred Again signed to the label. Grainge’s father is Sir Lucian Grainge, the boss of deadly rival Universal Music.
Noel Gallagher, Singer-songwriter
He may hail from Manchester, but NG has swaggered in and out of NW postcodes for 30 years. Once a centrepiece of the Primrose Hill set (his house, Supernova Heights, was reportedly the site of celebrity orgies), Gallagher’s name is synonymous with Britpop, the Nineties, and now Ticketmaster. A boon to music and to the economy. Take a bow, chief!
Stormzy, Rapper
From Glastonbury to Hay festivals, the boy from Croydon is the peerless face of modern London. As the benefactor behind the Stormzy Scholarship for black students at the University of Cambridge, launched in 2018, he’s been an instrumental part of the conversation around racial inequalities as well as an inspiration to young black Britons across the country.
Culture
George Osborne, Chair of the British Museum
The former chancellor and editor of the Evening Standard is now the figurehead of our foremost cultural institution — and at the very heart of some of the top debates of our time around colonialism, artistic ownership and what it means to say something is “British”.
Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum
Former politician Tristram Hunt has transformed the V&A into a global hub renowned for its exhibitions, which celebrate London’s role in the histories of fashion and the decorative arts. From Naomi Campbell to Fashioning Masculinities, the museum’s Hunt-era shows have been peerless in their capture of the zeitgeist.
Rebecca Salter, President of the Royal Academy
Abstract, intriguing and emotional, you know a Rebecca Salter piece when you see one. In 2019, she was awarded the honour of becoming the RA’s first female president in its 256-year history.
Robin Birley, Club owner
Robin Birley is a master of London’s nightlife and hospitality scenes. The man behind some of the city’s most elite clubs, he’s the go-to for those who want to rub shoulders with celebs while sipping an old fashioned — if you’re on the list, that is.
Art
Jay Jopling, Gallerist
The founder of White Cube gallery has been making and breaking artists’ careers since 1993. He is also responsible for unleashing Inigo Philbrick onto the world — who would go on to orchestrate the biggest art fraud in US history.
Phoebe Saatchi and Arthur Yates, Gallerists
They host the coolest after-parties in the business — Frieze, Serpentine, you name it. The powerhouse duo of Phoebe Saatchi (daughter of Charles) and her husband Arthur Yates may rub shoulders with the St James’s establishment, but absolutely everything about them is fresh, cool and swashbuckling.
Dame Tracey Emin, Artist
The artist who became a cause célèbre is still challenging our ideas about art four decades into her career. She is, par excellence, the blueprint for the modern art school girlie — as well as a machine gun of headlines and simply the most exciting person in her field.
Olaolu Slawn, Artist
“I just have no interest in my art. I make it so I can f*** about”. Olaolu Slawn, the latest enfant terrible of the London art scene is notorious for his satirical spray-paints. The Nigerian-British artist also became the youngest ever designer of the Britannia statuette last year.
Flora Yukhnovich, Artist
Never has a first name been more fitting for an artist, whose floral motifs and arresting palette are on display at the Wallace Collection until November 3. At age 34, Yukhnovich — who makes playful updates on the rococo style — has become one of the most recognisable young painters of her day; and proves the 18th century is clearly en vogue.
Screen
Riz Ahmed, Actor, director, rapper and activist
As Riz MC (one half of hip hop duo Swet Shop Boys) he is probably the only critically and commercially acclaimed rapper who has a PPE degree from Oxford. Ahmed is also an Oscar and Emmy-winning actor. He is a highly influential activist as well, campaigning to raise funds for Rohingya and Syrian refugee children.
Idris Elba, Actor and campaigner
When he’s not DJing as Big Driis, the actor (one of the world’s 20 highest grossing) is a focus of London’s social scene — a fixture of any party involving the great and good. He’s the man who brought to life John Luther and Stringer Bell, and he’s the face of Calvin Klein along with his wife, Sabrina. He also campaigns against knife crime and is spearheading an eco city off the coast of Sierra Leone. Is there anything he can’t do?
Anne Mensah, UK Content VP of Netflix
Netflix has upended the television industry since it launched in 2007. With more than £10 billion being spent overall on programming last year — including shows like Bridgerton and Baby Reindeer — you can see why Anne Mensah, who grew up in south-east London, might have an influence on your evening.
Stage
James Graham, Playwright
Graham holds the West End in the palm of his inky hand. He’s written 30 plays in 18 years, meaning not a day has gone by without one of his shows being on in theatreland. These include 2023’s Dear England (nominated for two Evening Standard Theatre Awards) and this year’s Boys from the Blackstuff, an adaptation of Alan Bleasdale’s unemployment drama.
Sonia Friedman, Theatre and film producer
Friedman is the most influential theatre producer in the city. From Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to a critically acclaimed adaptation of Stranger Things, her company has put on more than 200 shows since 2002. These have won more than 300 major awards — including the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play on five occasions.
Sam Mendes, Director
Last year’s winner of the Evening Standard Lifetime Achievement Award needs no introduction. Mendes has directed everything from the best James Bond films to some of the most remarkable theatre the West End has ever seen. If we had a pound for every time someone told us “you MUST see The Hills of California”, we’d be able to buy the film rights.
Cush Jumbo, Actress and writer
We first spotted Jumbo’s talent 11 years ago with her extraordinary show, Josephine and I — which won her the Emerging Talent trophy at the 2013 Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Since then, she’s starred in the lead role of US TV series The Good Wife and The Good Fight, distinguished herself as a brilliant Hamlet at the Young Vic, and Lady Macbeth at the Donmar, which transferred to the West End this autumn.
Tom Holland, Actor
Zendaya’s husband-to-be is more than just a pretty face (and Spider-Man). The West End may have been thriving already, but his sell-out run as Romeo in Jamie Lloyd’s minimalist adaptation of Shakespeare’s play at the Duke of York’s was a crowning moment for commercial theatre this year. He’s one of the many slebs who’s set up shop in Richmond.
Indhu Rubasingham, Director
The current artistic director of the Kiln in Kilburn will ascend to the top job in theatre, director of the National Theatre, next spring. A champion of young, disenfranchised voices, she will be the first woman to hold the position and follow in the footsteps of Laurence Olivier, Nicholas Hytner and Rufus Norris.
Daisy Edgar-Jones, Screen star transferring to the stage
Normal People catapulted her to fame; Where The Crawdads Sing cemented her status as one of the brightest stars of our generation. Now she’s coming to the London stage in December for a new adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, at the Almeida — following in the footsteps of her Normal People co-star, Paul Mescal, who drew unprecedented crowds to the Islington playhouse for his performance in Streetcar last year.
Lily Collins, Screen star now taking on the West End
Emily in … London? Yes. The star of one of Netflix’s biggest hits/hate watches is currently taking the West End by storm in Bess Wohl’s Barcelona at the Duke of York’s Theatre.
Podcasts
Gary Lineker, Co-founder of Goalhanger
The Beeb’s director-general Tim Davie may have begged Gary Lineker to stay on as Match of the Day presenter, but why should he? Lineker’s very own Goalhanger — which produces The Rest is Politics, The Rest is History and The Rest is Money — is the number one independent podcast company in the country and an agenda-setting powerhouse.
Louis Theroux, Host of The Louis Theroux Podcast
Still the best interviewer of his generation — subtle, gentle, smart — Theroux has reinvented himself as something of an armchair psychologist on his self-titled podcast, where he gets to the heart of very personal matters with Tracey Emin, Mia Khalifa and Katie Price.
