Damon Albarn will join The Orchestra of Syrian Musicians in a special performance for St George’s Day in Liverpool. The April 23 event at the Philharmonic Hall is the latest in the ongoing Rapid Response Unit initiative as part of Liverpool 2018 celebrations. Rapid Response Unit, working out of a ‘news bureau’ in the St Johns Shopping Centre, is a year of news seen through the lens of leading national and international artists as they respond to global events and world storie

Liverpool Pride returns to the city centre for a ninth year and with the theme of #AllTogetherNow. The 2018 event, which attracts tens of thousands of revellers each year, will take place in the new location of Tithebarn Street on the weekend of July 28-29. Pride is the city’s popular annual celebration of all things LGBTQ+ and organisers say the festival theme encompasses all communities. John Bird, Trustee of Liverpool Pride Charity said: “It’s a momentous year for the city

Roll up roll up for Northern Broadsides’ latest visit to Liverpool, with a new production – a fresh version of Dickens’ Hard Times – and a new boss at the helm. So farewell Barrie Rutter, and welcome Wirral’s Conrad Nelson, long-time Broadsider as actor, director and composer, who takes on the last two of these three duties in this Deborah McAndrew adaptation of the great Victorian chronicler’s northern novel. Mind you, while Rutter may be absent in body, he’s not absent in s

CBBC is bringing a major children’s festival to Liverpool as part of the city’s 2018 celebrations. Liverpool beat tough competition from other locations to host the three-day event which takes place at Croxteth Park this summer. It is the first time the BBC has held a festival dedicated to youngsters, with the CBBC Summer Social aimed at six to 12-year-olds. A host of CBBC favourites including Hacker T Dog, Mr Tumble and presenters Sam and Mark will take part in the festival

As leaving presents go, it’s not a bad one – the chance to curate your own show to celebrate the birthday of one of the country’s most important art galleries. But in actual fact, the idea for Ken’s Show: Exploring the Unseen, named after Tate Liverpool’s recently retired art handling manager, pre-dates the eponymous Ken’s departure and the Albert Dock gallery’s 30th anniversary celebrations all together. It turns out Ken Simons was first asked to come up with a few works for

This week appears to have been a warm walk down memory lane for the prolific polymath – and prolific Tweeter – Stephen Hough. Back in the street where he first learned to play the piano, if social media is to be believed the internationally-acclaimed virtuoso from the Wirral seems to be having a fine time. And he is definitely in fine form. Hough is home to perform all five Beethoven piano concertos between now and June, and launched the cycle with a delicate and enchanting p

The world of gaming and the avatars who inhabit it is being explored in a new immersive exhibition at FACT. States of Play: Roleplay Reality looks at the creation of virtual worlds through the works of a number of artists, producers and platforms, and explores how gamers create online identities to ask – how do the roles we play reflect our realities…and how do they shape them? Works on show across the Wood Street venue’s galleries and public spaces include Larry Achiampong a

Work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh is set to go on show at the Walker Art Gallery as part of its 2019 exhibition programme. The show, which will be ticketed, runs at the William Brown Street gallery from March 15 to August 26, and will explore the work on Mackintosh and his contemporaries in what became known as The Glasgow Style – through 200 objects including stained glass, ceramics, furniture, embroidery and metalwork. It follows the opening of an exhibition of 14 works by

A new portrait of Liverpool-born actress Kim Cattrall is set to go on show at the Walker Art Gallery from today. The painting was created by Samira Addo, who won the Sky Portrait Artist of the Year award. The competition series was filmed last year but the result was kept firmly under wraps until the grand final was screened last night. Cattrall, who visited the William Brown Street gallery with family for the filming of the unveiling of the portrait, has Tweeted her congratu

When Nina – a story about me and Nina Simone (to give it its full title) was first devised, there were plans to stage it in the co-producing cities of Liverpool and Sweden. But Josette Bushell-Mingo’s impassioned half-play, half-gig – inspired by the music and the civil rights activism of the late American singer – has gathered an unstoppable momentum which has carried it through sold-out runs in London and Edinburgh too. Now, some 90 shows later, it’s back ‘home’ for one las