When Tate Liverpool opened its doors on 24 May 1988, it was widely considered – indeed, it was the initial proposition – that while it was good for a city in such desperate need of a shot in the arm, it would serve as little more than a “Tate of the North”. An initiative of the Merseyside Development Corporation, an organisation tasked with regenerating a city languishing in a state of post-industrial ennui, the gallery was originally expected only to display work from the Tate Collection, acting as a northern repository for the national collection of modern art which could only, until 1988, be seen at the Tate Gallery in London.

Now, a quarter of a century since it first opened, we catch up with a woman uniquely well-placed to comment on the reality of life at Tate Liverpool, and the role that the gallery has come to play in the city: Jemima Pyne, Head of Media and Audiences at Tate Liverpool. “I joined when it was still a building site in 1987 – so much has changed,” she says. Whatever those initial thoughts of what Tate Liverpool should be, Pyne is unequivocal when she states that “Tate of the North was an idea, Tate Liverpool the reality”. Overlooking the historic Albert Dock, from its earliest days the gallery, far from simply being an off-shoot labouring in the shadow of its older brother in London, was granted an unexpected degree of autonomy.

Tate of the North was just an idea. Tate Liverpool was the reality.

This autonomy, along with its then-status as the only designated modern art gallery in the UK (until the arrival of Tate Modern in 2000), enabled Tate Liverpool to establish and follow its own path. “In retrospect it was very brave of the Tate Gallery, as it was known then, to establish Tate Liverpool and let it develop in the way it did,” says Pyne. That development included innovations such as themed exhibitions – around art movements, for example, or around particular ideas – common curatorial practice now, but at the time, almost unheard of. It also saw change on the front line, with gallery “invigilators” becoming “information assistants”, whose role was as much about being able to talk about the works on display as protect them from damage or theft.

Collaboration was also there from the start, with the gallery taking a key role in Video Positive during its first year, a city-wide exhibition of video art that laid the groundwork for later festivals such as Artranspennine98 and the Liverpool Biennial. Unsurprisingly, given such development, Tate Liverpool went on to become the most visited gallery of modern and contemporary art outside London. No mean feat. But perhaps more compelling than that oft-repeated fact is the parallel upturn in fortunes that Liverpool itself has seen. Pyne agrees. “Liverpool had enjoyed an amazing cultural history, but by the 1980s it was a city in economic decline … [its] cultural regeneration has been remarkable and Tate made a significant contribution to it.”

While Liverpool’s art offer is as congruent as it is impressive, it’s hard to understate the “significant” role Tate Liverpool has played in helping elevate the outlook of the city, an outlook that culminated in its bidding for, and winning, the 2008 European Capital of Culture. “We did everything we could to help secure Capital of Culture for Liverpool,” continues Pyne. “We very much see the cultural sector as an ecology with all the dependencies that implies, and we enjoy working in partnership with lots of organisations.”

Reflecting on this week’s 25^th anniversary celebrations, we wonder what Pyne thinks of as Tate Liverpool’s development in that period, and what role it will come to occupy in future years. “More than 15 million visits have been made to Tate Liverpool since we opened  … [and] I think we’ve raised the bar for galleries of modern and contemporary art outside London. As for the next 25 years? Well, we’ll need to follow where the artists take us, but I hope people will still want to come to galleries to look at art.” A simple wish it may be, but it’s one that thus far has been the starting point for those millions of people passing through Tate Liverpool’s revolving doors over 25 exceptional years. Here’s looking forward to the next quarter century of game-changing exhibitions.

Sometimes you just need pancakes. Big, fluffy, American-style pancakes, smothered in maple syrup and butter, with a stack of bacon on the side and a large cup of coffee to wash it all down. If that sounds like the kind of breakfast that floats your boat, then you should seriously consider paying a visit to Moose Coffee on Dale Street. Situated close to Moorfields Station and Liverpool’s financial district, Moose Coffee was born out of a desire to capture the American (and Canadian – hence the Moose iconography) attitude to “the best meal of the day”. Here you’ll find authentic North American diner food (think grits and waffles) set against a tasteful and elegant Scouse interior – high ceilings, leather booths, formica tables and an amusing array of moose-themed ephemera on the walls.

Try its pimped-up French toast; brioche griddled in egg and vanilla batter, with bacon & maple syrup

While Moose Coffee’s pancakes are a definite draw, the rest of its breakfast menu is impressively extensive, taking in everything from the “New York Moose” (its take on Eggs Benedict, served on top of a toasted bagel) and the “Grande Bouche” (a pimped-up version of French toast, featuring two pieces of brioche griddled in an egg and vanilla batter, served with bacon and maple syrup) to the “Manolito” (a Huevos Rancheros-style dish containing homemade refried beans, eggs, salsa, grated cheese and a large dollop of sour cream). If you’re after something slightly less calorific, it also serves simpler fare in the form of porridge, granola and toasted bagels.

Indeed, bagels are a definite theme here and are pretty much what Moose Coffee does best. Its substantial sandwich menu is chock full of the things, alongside a wide selection of salads and burgers. We’re a big fan of the “Reuben”, a delightfully messy concoction of salt beef, melted Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, dill pickles and mustard mayonnaise, which is arguably one of the best bagels in the city. For something slightly lighter, try the “Nova Scotia”, a seemingly simple combination of smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers smothered onto a toasted bagel, which works mainly because all of the ingredients are well sourced, plentiful and utterly delicious. While the coffee here is perfectly decent (you can even buy bags of beans to take away), we’d suggest going the whole American hog and opting for a milkshake. Whizzed up with Dime Bars, Oreos and all sorts of other sugary delights, and vying for attention alongside huge slices of Red Velvet Cake, they pay apt homage to the American appetite for the sickly sweet.

If there’s one area where Moose Coffee falls down, it’s that it doesn’t have WiFi, meaning that it’s not the best place to pop into if you’re looking for a secluded corner to curl up with your laptop. However, if you’re looking for somewhere in the city’s financial district to sit, relax and enjoy a long, leisurely brunch with friends, you’ll not find a better place to do so.

Those who have walked the streets of the Northern Quarter or watched the Great British Menu will be more than familiar with The Roadhouse and Prestwich restaurant, Aumbry. Few, however, will be aware of the link between the two. That link comes in the form of Kate Mountain, a woman who started her career in the bar of The Roadhouse in 1994 and went on to become its manager during the indie boom years. Back then, The Roadhouse was a regular stop-off for touring bands, as well as a focus for musicians trying to get a career-defining break. “I stayed on after graduating; the place has always had a really family atmosphere, so taking on more responsibility was my idea of heaven. Then the owners went bankrupt and gave us all two weeks’ notice. I didn’t want to work for anyone else; I was happy where I was.”

The then-manager decided to take a massive gamble and buy the venue – but knew she couldn’t do it alone. “Steve Lloyd had been running his own business for ten years at the time, which helped prove that together we could bring the venue back to life. The Roadhouse was as important to him because he was the technical manager, while I knew how to run the club and promote bands,” says Mountain. “The transition was seamless, though there was probably a degree of naivety. But I was 25, it was all I knew, it was one of the few venues that was thriving, and I knew it was viable.”

Their relationship continues to work well some 15 years on, as does the original commitment to supporting and nurturing new musical talent – Mountain counts the Puppini Sisters, Muse and Roots Manuva as acts she has helped develop. “We’ve also been part of Elbow’s success. Before they were signed, they all individually worked at The Roadhouse (apart from Mark Potter); it was a logistical nightmare when they actually performed because I lost all my staff! We made it work; they were always really fun to be with. They could tell a million and one jokes about each other and finish each other’s sentences, they’d known each other so long, and we’ve been lucky enough to be a part of their friendship since.”

If you’re approached by someone you can support, why the hell wouldn’t you work with them?

One of Mountain’s strengths is her ability to form the sorts of partnerships that make unexpected things happen. Her long-term friendship with chef Mary-Ellen McTague (the pair met aged just 19 at, of course, The Roadhouse) is a case in point. “Mary-Ellen decided to leave Manchester and go off and learn to cook properly. She explored various hotels and restaurants in the UK, met her husband Laurence, and worked at the Fat Duck for four years, but we stayed in touch. We’d always joked about opening a restaurant together, and then she phoned me up one afternoon and actually asked. It took me about two seconds to say yes.”

While Mountain is the first to admit that becoming a restaurateur wasn’t top of her list, she reckons that the decision to become one made sense. By that time McTague had some serious culinary form and was tipped as a “best up and coming chef” by the Good Food Guide. “In any field, if you are approached by people you know and are in a position to support, why the hell wouldn’t you want to do something with them? We were well matched in enthusiasm.”

A year after McTague first mooted the idea, Aumbry opened – in an out of town location that at that time wasn’t on the foodie circuit. But the choice of location, in a tiny cottage in Prestwich, proved a wise one. With low overheads, McTague was able to focus on the food without too much of a worry about making ends meet. “I suppose we felt – if we build it, they will come. We always knew we wanted to provide a really excellent offering of the best quality food possible. Seasonal, local and served professionally, but informally. We wanted to provide a proper night out and a sense of occasion, without requiring a dress code.” The risk paid off, with Aumbry winning over national food critics, collecting awards and filling its stylish tables. “Fine dining, historically perhaps, has an association with slightly sneering staff, but we just wanted people to be comfortable and be served by a friendly bunch of highly skilled staff.” Knowing your stuff, making people feel at home – it’s an approach that hasn’t just worked at Aumbry and The Roadhouse. It’s an ethos that has served this particular Mancunian entrepreneur very well indeed.

Standing on the roof of Manchester Art Gallery, the city is a grey landscape of brick and concrete, an alien terrain of ducts, vents and chimneys. A pair of pristine white beehives looks about as out of place here as a Jersey cow in the ticket hall at Piccadilly Station. But the bees aren’t bothered. The spring sunshine has brought them out and they’re buzzing calmly about their business.

This summer, the bees are coming home. Admiring their famous work ethic, the Victorians adopted bees and beehives as the symbol of Manchester, and the insects are a common decorative motif on city buildings (once you start looking you’ll find them everywhere). Now, a handful of urban beekeeping initiatives from the city’s cultural institutions, combined with a widespread surge of interest in projects aimed at greening the city centre, seem destined to make 2013 the year the city finally does its buzzing mascot proud.

A pair of beehives looks as out of place here as a Jersey cow at Piccadilly Station

Manchester Art Gallery’s bees are tended by a group of well-trained volunteers from the gallery’s staff, and today I’m being shown around by John Peel, a collection officer who seems delighted that his job description now includes hive maintenance and honey harvesting. On the other side of the roof are the humble beginnings of a rooftop garden, with the first seedlings poking above soil in pallets and large tomato cans from the museum café. Peel tells me the gallery bees had a difficult first year; queen problems were followed by the coldest winter in decades, which killed off colonies all over the country. But the gallery bees have made it, and the second hive will shortly receive its new occupants. Last year they produced 64 jars of pale and delicate honey, and later this year the bees are expected to start earning their keep when the first jars go on sale in the gallery shop.

Likewise, Manchester Museum will soon be getting its first hive, and when renovation work is complete next year a hive will be installed atop the Whitworth. Bees are also part of the plans for Manchester International Festival’s Biospheric Project, which will see a derelict mill in Salford transformed into a farm and urban agriculture lab. Three hives will be sited on the roof, producing honey and helping to pollinate the farm’s plants in the process. (A beekeeping workshop will take place there on 7 July; check the festival website after the full programme is released 23 May.)

Happy bees Where bees are you need lots of flowers, and there’s good news on this front too. Plans are afoot for a River of Flowers in the city centre, a corridor of plantings on rooftops, parks and odd bits of unused land to ensure that city pollinators don’t have to forage too far. And urban gardening does seem to be something of a craze in Manchester. The Dig the City festival returns in August, bringing with it pop-up gardens and input from the likes of the National Trust and Royal Horticultural Society. Chef Simon Rogan is installing a rooftop garden at the Midland Hotel to grow produce for his two restaurants on site, The French and the forthcoming Mr Cooper’s House and Garden, a tribute to the vast private gardens which once stood on the site. The wonderful Manchester Garden City initiative has planted a mini-orchard in St. John’s Gardens, vegetable beds in Piccadilly Basin and at Church Street Car Park, which I was unaware of until I happened to be passing and saw someone deposit an armload of brush in a newly installed compost box (the country’s first composting multi-storey?) And the Red Rose Forest is leading a campaign to plant trees and hanging baskets in Stevenson Square, while another campaign aims to install vertical plantings on those ugly concrete walls in Piccadilly Gardens.

All this is good news. The English honeybee population has been halved in the last thirty years; a worst-case-scenario combination of habitat loss, extreme weather, mite infestations and pesticides. Bees don’t just make honey, they pollinate our crops, and if they go we’re all in big trouble. So it’s great to hear that the city’s doing its bit to help the bees. And a greener city centre is something we can all enjoy, bee, butterfly, bird or human. Put us down for a few jars of honey.

Being located in Manchester (the beating cultural heart of Britain, people) we’re not used to being bested. We like to think our city has it all. But every so often we come across a place that is, whisper it, slightly better than anything on our doorstep. Colours May Vary is a case in point. A design and bookshop located on the ground floor of an office block in Leeds and next door to a commercial gallery, it doesn’t look much. Step inside, however, and you’ll find a store stacked with contemporary design and photo books, magazines, artist-made and limited-edition goods, illustration, ceramics and homewares that say, very quietly, “Magma, eat your heart out”.

The shop opened in November last year and is run by Becky Palfrey and Leeds City College arts librarian, Andy Gray. They both hold History of Art degrees and have variously worked in record shops, interior and jewellery design, and it is this fairly wide-ranging background that explains a stock that jumps from embossed leather pencil cases by Present & Correct to prints by illustrator Eleni Kalorkoti, via vintage children’s books, one-off felt toys and the sorts of graphically-printed tea towels that make us want to do the washing up. Which is a novel feeling. “We both have a huge passion for the graphic arts, illustration and photography, as well as being magpies for the vintage and unusual, whether that’s stationery, ceramics or printed matter,” says Becky Palfrey. “We felt that Leeds just didn’t have this kind of shop, the kind of shop we love. We’ve been talking about it for about eight years.” After spending 12 years as a jewellery designer, Palfrey was offered redundancy, and it gave the couple the push they needed to stop talking and start doing.

We are magpies for the vintage & unusual, whether that’s stationery, ceramics or printed matter

Living and working together for most couples would be a shortcut to divorce but to Gray and Palfrey it appears to contribute to the ethos and atmosphere of the shop. “We both have to agree 100% on every item we stock,” says Palfrey. “We love books but we find a lot of bookshops so serious and unwelcoming. We wanted to create a space that was warm and made you want to stay and look around.” We can attest to the friendliness of the shop: the guy being served before us was mid-way through a very enjoyable conversation about vinyl when we started our lengthy browsing session (yes, we were listening); clearly, the time Gray spent working in record shops hasn’t been wasted.

The only downside to Colours May Vary is its out-of-centre location; it’s a ten minute or so hike from Leeds’ Corn Exchange. But even that is no big issue: the shop it sits inside Munro House, a building that is home to a gallery, the creative Duke Studios (where our friend, the Culture Vulture, lives) and is close to Leeds College of Music, Yorkshire Playhouse and the Northern Ballet. “We took a gamble but felt that the community that has been building in Munro House and the surrounding area would appreciate what we were doing,” says Palfrey. “Luckily this has turned out to be the case, and people are now making the walk across town – and even from surrounding cities.” That’ll be us, then, though we’re hoping that the imminent arrival of the shop’s website will save a few trips Leeds-bound.

Richard Wentworth is a very good teacher. We have watched him shape and guide a flimsy idea about what to do for Museums at Night into an actual, proper event. We have seen him turn the city into his school, with us his willing students. We have observed him creating something quite remarkable from our collective contributions.

And what did he create? On paper, it looks simple: an exhibition at the Whitworth, one created from objects donated by members of the public the previous evening. We’ve been in on this project since the start and so we had no cynicism to park; we can imagine, though, a certain rolling of eyes at the thought of an artist creating an exhibition from some of the things donated, the Tesco receipt pulled from the musty depths of a rucksack, the pair of pants, the erasers and lipstick pen, the badges and bus pass. We can hear the Daily Mail headlines a-screaming that Public Money Was Surely Wasted on such an exercise. And, to be fair, we would forgive a smattering of cynicism. Sure, how can you make something meaningful out of a load of junk “donated” by the public?

This was an exercise in curatorial magic. It proved that art is alchemy.

Yet the strangest thing happened. First, several people donated things of real value, from the Russian artists who gave the most wonderful paper sculpture to the person who donated their grandfather’s beautifully-made wooden tape measure. Second, there was an ingenious “process” by which you donated your object. You didn’t just hand it over; you walked through a six-stage acquisition process, one that aped the real-life museological acquisition process. From describing materials to recording weight, as donators moved through each stage there was a gathering sense of their object’s actual value; the donation went from being a bit of a laugh to something more serious. By the time we signed our own object over – well, frankly, it was a wrench. Bagged up and labelled, along with it went our story and a small fragment of our ego: would the recipient care about the object (and by extension us) as much as we did?

“There was a strange, slightly festive, slightly primitive, feeling last night,” said Wentworth of the donation process. “It was like watching Princess Diana’s funeral, where I saw ordinary people throwing flowers. Last night was a bit like that; people were bringing things and everything was charged. In fact, eat your heart out, Antiques Roadshow, it felt quite substantial.”

As Wentworth and his team spent the following day sifting through the donated objects, “many of the things started talking to each other. There was an incredible pattern, a set of rhymes.” Wentworth arranged objects into small groups, with these groups then scattered unlabelled through the gallery. “The debate surrounding each and every donation had a profound tenderness to it and at different moments the most ordinary thing was able to rise to high levels of shared appreciation,” wrote Wentworth in a hand-out given to attenders on the night. Of all the objects, three stood out: the Russian paper sculpture, an iron railroad spike from New Jersey, and a Tesco invoice stained by a coffee spill. “The author(s) of this particular artwork made a spectacular intervention by interpreting this coffee stain as a replica map of Africa. Enjoy their knowledge of politics and geography as you look at it. In this instance, Europe had to be invented as stain-free,” wrote Wentworth of the meticulous and surprisingly accurate map biro-ed over the stain.

So, the exhibition at the Whitworth last night turned out to be much more than a show of unwanted tat. It was testament to the lure and the power of collecting; how we give inanimate objects a kind of emotional charge; how we invest memories and meaning in the most ordinary of things. It was a comment on the kind of power our museums and galleries hold over us, and in turn just how much we hold them in regard. It was an articulation of the ties that bind us to things, things to place, place back to people (one of the best things Wentworth said last night was that “this couldn’t happen in London; it’s not the same, there isn’t the same emotional glue”).

But mostly it was about how art is alchemy. As an exercise in curatorial magic, it taught all those assembled last night that the application of an artistic eye can transform the banal into the exquisite. “Maybe that’s the point of artworks,” said Wentworth. “They give us a kind of collective energy. This is a very unusual energy field – and you are part of it.” We couldn’t have been more pleased to have been part of something so special. Like we said, Richard Wentworth is a very good teacher.

When you think of Land Art, you might think of Robert Smithson’s epic earthworks hidden away in the desert of Utah. Or you might think of Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapping coastlines and monuments in tarpaulin. Or maybe, a bit closer to home, you might think of Antony Gormley’s high-profile urban interventions. Land Art doesn’t tend to be associated with intimacy, government departments, mountain bike trails, forest management or sudden showers of hail stones on an otherwise mild afternoon. But this is exactly what you encounter at Grizedale Forest, the home of two arts organisations and a permanent collection of around 60 sculptures.

The relationship between Grizedale Forest and the visual arts is as fascinating as it is complex. The Grizedale Society began commissioning sculptures in 1977, when its remit covered visual arts and also running a theatre. Many of the sculptors involved in the early days, such as David Nash and Richard Harris, have gone on to become household names. Since 1999, however, care of the artwork has been the responsibility of the Forestry Commission (operating under the title Grizedale Sculpture), while an international arts programme continues under the auspices of Grizedale Arts, a separate organisation based nearby. But the collection of sculptures isn’t static: Grizedale Sculpture still works with artists and has just launched an ambitious new commissioning programme, Art Roots.

The forest is also the subject of Edwina Fitzpatrick’s practice-based doctoral research, co-supervised by Glasgow University and Grizedale Sculpture. The artist tells me that her research takes the form of artworks or experiments, to explore the notion of mutability, change and “the landscape as a cultural archive”. She is also developing the archive held by Grizedale Sculpture; plugging holes by interviewing artists and producing the most basic of documents – a database of all of the artworks that have and do exist in the forest. Fitzpatrick describes Grizedale as having “many guises… it is many things all in one place, a strange mixture,” and definitely a place that’s ripe for both artistic inspiration and further research.

To see all the art could take days; you start in the centre of the forest and follow a network of trails to find it

When I meet Hayley Skipper, the Arts Development Officer for the Forestry Commission, she is keen to point out that “this is not Yorkshire Sculpture Park”. This isn’t a criticism; it’s just that the two couldn’t be more different. The experience of visiting Grizedale works best as one element of another activity: walking, cycling, a tree-top adventure weekend, a getaway from the city. To see all of the sculptures could take up to five days, and visitors access the forest, unusually, from the centre, where a network of trails lead to and around the artworks. Sculptures appear suddenly through the trees, either confrontationally like Robert Bryce Muir’s mythical “Mea Culpa” or shyly like Colin Rose’s “Ting”.

Skipper takes me to Carron Crag, the highest point in the forest. Despite it being early March, snow sparkles on the ground, and the climate here seems to be a law unto itself. At the peak we can see the extent of the forested area and how its valley location keeps it hidden from Windermere, Hawkshead and other nearby towns. We can see, too, a visual map of forest management: different tree types and ages being harvested and planted. On the ground, a monkey puzzle tree, holly bush or spruce occasionally appear due to test planting and self-seeding; these natural anomalies feel like sculptural objects in their own right.

Descending the mountain again, Skipper shows me the outcome of a 2011 commission by muf architecture/art (above). The simplicity of “The Wood for the Trees” – a fallen tree hovering between a car park and a thoroughfare – belies Muff’s research and engagement with the place. Clues as to the extent of this research appear in the sound work nearby, a combination of bird song and voices of the people of Grizedale Forest. It forms an intimate portrait of the delicate balance of people, industry, plant and animal life that has developed here.

It is no wonder that artists are keen to work within this ecology; the forest as a context for artworks is both beautiful and politically charged.  England’s total wooded area makes up around 10% of its land mass, one of the lowest percentages in Europe. Despite costing around 90p per household per year to manage, for two years the present government dithered over a decision to sell them off. A huge public outcry forced the government to reconsider; it is this context that Skipper believes will be addressed by future artists when using the forest as subject matter and site for their work.

Skipper already knows who some of those future artists will be thanks to Art Roots, a partnership between the Arts Council and the Forestry Commission that has seen Skipper and her team work with artists Tania Kovats, Laura Ford, Keith Wilson and others. Edwina Fitzpatrick says that artists coming to Grizedale “are attracted to working within nature in a romantic sense, but all end up having to confront the idea of forest management and the artificiality of the landscape. They realise that nature is a construct.” What she means is that everything at Grizedale is constructed, from dry stone walls to a forest established to shore up the area’s poor, shallow soil. The sculptures are simply another layer of construction, although they, like the forest, change and succumb to the elements over time.

The magic of Grizedale Forest is its ability to appeal to everyone, from super-fit mountain bikers to art lovers. It is day trip-able from Liverpool or Manchester, and surprisingly accessible from Leeds, Newcastle or London. One note of caution, though: having approached from both north and south, signage is less visible from the north – perhaps this is because us townies leaving the M6 at junction 36 need extra help. My advice? Take your time. You may well take a wrong turn, yet getting lost here can be a pleasure.

Liverpool is a place that appreciates the importance of a good brew. Walk down practically any street in the city centre and you’re likely to spot at least one coffee shop (Bold Street has a Costa Coffee, a Starbucks and a Café Nero situated within 50 metres of each other). However, as any discerning caffeine fiend is aware, not all coffees are created equal. If you’re a Scouser in the know, you’ll have already paid a visit to Bold Street Coffee to sample the delights of its single blend filter coffees, as well as experience what might very possibly be the best Flat White currently served in the North West of England. You’ll probably have feasted on its excellent sandwiches, chatted with the friendly baristas and maybe even congratulated them on their daring decision to play Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” at full blast at 7.30am. And you’ll probably have wished that there were more coffee shops in the city offering as good an experience.

Thankfully, there are. Situated snugly at the crossroads of Duke Street and Hanover Street is Duke Street Espresso Bar, Bold Street Coffee’s little brother. An airy, stylish homage to the kind of cafés that are ten-a-penny in places like New York, it is a coffee geek’s dream. Peek at the menu and you’ll see a plethora of single origin brews, all hand ground on the premises, which you can choose to have brewed either via the drip-brew method or in an aeropress. Look up and you’ll see a ceiling strewn with hundreds of paper espresso cups. Listen and you’ll hear everything from Richard Hawley to Miles Davis coming from the stereo.

A homage to the kinds of cafés that are ten-a-penny in New York, it’s a coffee geek’s dream

Duke Street Espresso Bar describes itself as a “toastery’’, meaning that the food on offer focuses mainly on bread. Slices of toast start at 60p and can be topped with peanut butter, jam, marmalade, honey or marmite. Alternatively, you could pick up one of its selection of pastries; the excellent homemade toasted fruit loaf (£2.50) is packed full of dried fruit and comes in doorstop-sized slabs dripping with butter. If you’re looking for something slightly more substantial, go for one of the toasted bagels, which come filled to the hilt with pastrami and cheese.

Duke Street Espresso Bar isn’t as big as Bold Street Coffee but, because of its location, it does tend to be quieter, allowing you to hunker down and enjoy a good coffee and some handy free WiFi in relative peace (at least for now). If your tastes veer towards something a little stronger, the bar hosts occasional Wine & Cheese evenings and has even been known to mix up some coffee-based cocktails (its Flat White Russians are particularly delicious). In a city where it can often feel as though chains rule the roost, it’s nice to know that there’s somewhere local and unique where you can enjoy good ambience, good food, good tunes and a damn fine cup of coffee.

LOOK/13, the biennial photo fest that opens in Liverpool this weekend, is an event that captures the complexity and diversity of the photographic image. It does so via snaps of the urban landscape and large format displays, via new commissions, retrospective exhibitions, solo shows and pop-up studios, and via a National Photography Symposium run by Manchester’s Redeye. While the festival theme may focus on the person behind the lens (and the question “who do you think you are?”), much of what takes place is a reminder of two things. First, that despite, or perhaps because of, the advent of the digital age, photography has never felt so fresh. And second, that Liverpool is a city that gets culture.

“The reason the festival is here is because it’s such a great place to have a visual arts festival,” says festival director Patrick Henry. “Though it started life as a mini festival in Manchester in 2007, it was felt that Liverpool was the place where it could be made bigger and more ambitious.” The reason for Liverpool’s supremacy, in Henry’s mind at least, is to do with the city itself. “You’ve got collections in the city’s museums, galleries and studios, but it’s also a great venue for temporary events. Everything is within walking distance, it’s easily navigable; you’ve got the river and the waterfront, the Liverpool tradition of having a good time. That sense of the city is the backbone of the festival.”

Often, festivals can feel a bit detached from their setting. Not here.

While Henry is happy to wax lyrical about a city he is clearly so fond of, he does have a point. Liverpool’s tradition of cross-city arts festivals stretches back to the early 1990s, with Liverpool Biennial and this week’s Light Night just two of many carrying the flag for Scouse festivals with clout. “The way we have collaborated on this festival is particular to Liverpool,” says Henry. “We haven’t parachuted our programme into other people’s venues; each venue has developed its own programme and that means the festival is rooted in the city. It gives it strength and integrity, and is quite unusual for such a large event – often, festivals can feel a bit detached from their setting, which isn’t the case here.”

When it comes to photography, Liverpool also has form – something that Henry, as the former director of the Open Eye Gallery, knows all too well. Set up in 1977, home to a considerable archive as well as gallery space, the Open Eye is one of the UK’s leading such organisations. “But there are other good collections in the city,” says Henry. “The Walker has some quite unexpected things, including two major bodies of work by Martin Parr and Tom Wood. That work is part of the festival – and hasn’t been shown since it was acquired in the 1980s.” Practitioners have long come to Merseyside to make new work, and Martin Parr was no exception. His series of documentary images of New Brighton in the 1970s and 80s, and subsequent book, The Last Resort, launched his career. Tom Wood, meanwhile, photographed the people and places of Liverpool for over twenty years, his images forming a unique record of a city undergoing seismic economic and social change. “Both Parr and Wood showed their work at a joint exhibition at the Open Eye in 1986 – so, in a sense, LOOK/13 brings the pair together again,” says Henry.

Though the programme covers every major arts venue in the city, for Henry there are a couple of stand-out shows. The first is Kurt Tong’s solo exhibition at the Victoria Gallery and Museum. “He was born in Hong Kong but spent much of his life in the UK,” says Henry. “His project is about him trying to find a way of talking to his daughters about who they are, where they come from, and their mixed heritage. It was the first major element of the festival that we programmed and while it is incredibly personal, that idea – who do you think you are – went on to connect to and shape the rest of the programme.” The second is Keith Medley’s Double Take. The exhibition of Medley’s work at the Walker uses materials gathered from the commercial photographer’s portrait studio in Wallasey, a studio that continued using glass plates until the 1960s. “He would take two portraits of each sitter on the same plate, side by side,” says Henry. “We have taken these portraits and printed them up as doubles and they have a strange, uncanny relationship to each other. Sometimes one of the portraits has been scratched out, occasionally there is a different person, but generally it’s the same person with two different expressions – the two faces that the sitter has presented to the camera – and they can look so different that the effect of seeing both is spellbinding.” The Walker Art Gallery also hosts a major show by Rankin, while Henry’s old stamping ground, Open Eye, stages the first gallery exhibition in the UK for the French photographer, Charles Fréger.

It appears that LOOK/13 is set to have a good run. As for the idea that Liverpool is somehow better than Manchester in the photographic stakes, well, that’s only half true. Manchester’s Redeye worked as hard as its Liverpool counterparts to bring the first LOOK festival to Liverpool in 2011. “There’s a really strong photography hub around Manchester and Liverpool, which is about history, which is about teaching and working, which is about the archives that exist in both cities. The Manchester-Liverpool connection has been gathering strength over the past eight or nine years, and it has set the groundwork for that North West hub to exist.” Critical friend, yes, but it turns out that Manchester isn’t a rival after all. Liverpool may be a city that gets culture, but it’s one that gets collaboration, too.

Fancy a night at the museum? Good. You’ve come to the right place. As the nationwide nocturnal celebration of museum goodness gets underway on Thursday, further details of what’s planned in Manchester have been released. Now, we’ve spoken at length about Richard Wentworth and what he has planned already. We hope you’ve submitted pictures to our #lovecollecting campaign, and are planning on donating something to Manchester Art Gallery or Manchester Museum on Thursday night. Or perhaps you have your eye on one of Wentworth’s strange, circuitous bus tours of the city?

Electronic, mashed-up blues provide a soundtrack to Wentworth’s exhibition in a night

There is more, though. Alongside the bus tours and donation stations at Manchester Museum on Thursday, expect to find jewellery design workshops alongside a display inspired by the Museum’s collection, as well as a scientific “micro-lecture” series and tours of the exhibition All Other Things Being Equal. Discover more about the natural world and meet the Museum’s own ornithologists (and their stuffed charges). Manchester Art Gallery runs its Thursday Lates series,where the Finders Keepers DJs will be in the house (or, in this case, in the gallery atrium), providing the soundtrack to the surrender of your object. Rather excitingly, alongside the white-gloved curators guiding you through the various stages of donation/acquisition, Richard Wentworth will be on hand – for part of the night, at least. So you might get the chance to find out what he makes of your donation. There’s even a Museums at Night game, which you can play via your Smartphone – find out how to play by Tweeting @mynightmuseum and wait for a special “museum guide” to get in touch with details. There are apparently “spiritual rewards and actual prizes” on offer for players.

Over at the Whitworth on the Friday night, meanwhile, enjoy specially-produced live performances from electro blues outfit, WALK, and the electronic, improvised and mashed-up, beat-boxing and multi-layered mastery of Denis Jones, a musician whose latest release has been described by The Guardian as “scuzzy Mancunian blues at its richest and most intriguing”. Scuzzy and intriguing? That sounds like our kind of night.