Two star-studded charity concerts are set to be staged on the Liverpool waterfront this September to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ White Album. A bespoke 10,000-capacity outdoor arena will be created on the Pier Head for the September 8-9 shows. Money raised from the events will go to the Teenage Cancer Trust and the Nordoff Robbins music therapy charity. Tickets are now on sale costing from £45. The concerts come from the same team which staged the Number On

LEAP Dance Festival returns to Liverpool this autumn with ‘female focussed’ programme under the theme Suffrage! Along with it being the centenary of some women first winning the vote, festival producer MDI is also marking the organisation’s 25th anniversary in the city in 2018. In addition, LEAP is also part of Liverpool 2018, marking 10 years since the city’s Capital of Culture year, and MDI has planned a busy programme for the 10-day event running from November 2-12. The fe

More than 370,000 people have booked to see the Terracotta Warriors since they went on show in Liverpool in February. And National Museums Liverpool bosses believe the number visiting the China’s First Emperor exhibition will top half-a-million by the time it closes this October, making it the most popular show the organisation has ever held. Interest in the World Museum exhibition, part of Liverpool 2018 celebrations marking 10 years since the city’s Capital of Culture title

Tickle the Ivories is returning to Liverpool ONE – and you never know who you might see at the piano keyboard. Last summer eagle-eyed shoppers might have spotted Grammy Award-winning Canadian singer and jazz pianist Diana Krall playing some rollicking honky tonk at one upright outside John Lewis, while husband Elvis Costello filmed her and uploaded the footage on Twitter. Meanwhile 10-year-old Harrison Crane from Ormskirk drew a crowd with his rendition of I Giorni by Ludovic

Wirral Festival of Firsts opens the doors to its 2018 event this weekend. The annual festival of art, poetry, drama, music, exhibitions, storytelling and talks runs from June 30 to July 14 at venues across the peninsula. Teatro Pomodoro, singer Jacqui Dankworth, cartoonist Tony Husband, Wirral Symphonic Wind Band, author Elizabeth Gates and singer/songwriter Kete Bowers are among a busy line-up. There is a Community Poetry Day at West Kirby Arts Centre on July 1, and Children

Boisterous Theatre Company is bringing its acclaimed production of Bouncers back to Liverpool’s Royal Court – but this time on the main stage. The new company, which was formed to support and nurture talented performers, writers and creatives from Liverpool’s Black and Minority Ethnic communities, enjoyed a sell-out success in the studio theatre downstairs at the Roe Street venue earlier this year. Now its Urban Remix version of John Godber’s classic nightclub comedy is trans

New Brighton lighthouse and Liverpool’s Princes Park will be among the locations visited during the latest Giant spectacular. Royal de Luxe’s Giants will spend a day in Wirral as part of Liverpool’s Dream, running from October 4-7, and both the landmark Perch Rock lighthouse and the South Liverpool park will become massive public stages for events on October 5. The locations were revealed with the help of new artwork designed by city artist Alice Duke. Duke, who also created

The five shortlisted paintings vying for the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize have been revealed. The winner of the anonymous submission prize, which celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2018, will take home £25,000. All the shortlisted artworks are due to go on show at the Walker Art Gallery next month alongside more than 50 other paintings chosen for exhibit, and as part of the Liverpool Biennial. The works were judged by a panel of jurors including the artists Monster

So, to the Everyman Rep’s final production of 2018 – and Robert Farquhar’s audacious take on the Peer Gynt legend is quite a finale. The playwright has taken Ibsen’s mythical magnum opus and turned it in to a captivatingly crazy theatrical ride along the lines of his previous Everyman show, Dead Heavy Fantastic. With the full Rep company at the disposal of Farquhar and director Nick Bagnall, the pair have created a chaotic carnival of reality and fantasy, populated by a serie

As someone once said – for evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. But here in Arthur Miller’s chilling allegory, it turns out that sometimes even good men, when finally roused to act, can’t stop the wave of evil from engulfing all around them. Students of history will know that despite our knowledge of the past, it will keep repeating itself. Miller’s dramatic recreation of the infamous 1692 Salem witch trials was a piquant comment on post-war McCarthyism