Johnny James

Refract returns to Waterside this July with a genre-spanning music programme that’s as playful and unpredictable as the festival itself – and much of it is completely free.

From bhangra to breakbeat, Summer Sounds brings global grooves and community energy to Keighley’s Cliffe Castle Park.

Internet blackout fantasies, displaced mermaids and a filmmaker turning wolf. This all dayer explores experimental fiction filmmaking from three continents.

Take a storybook journey from Manchester into Brontë country and the limestone folds of the Yorkshire Dales – landscapes that have shaped some of England’s most enduring fiction.

From Manchester to Mr Darcy’s drawing room. Swap the city for sweeping landscapes, world class art and the gold-leaf grandeur of Chatsworth House.

From the urban hum of Manchester to the serene embrace of the Lake District, Rabbie’s tour offers a poetic escape into storied landscapes.

The Hallé Ancoats Community Choir performs uplifting music, from traditional songs to folk tunes, gospel pieces and original compositions.

Manchester Classical returns to The Bridgewater Hall with a vibrant weekend of music that reaffirms the city’s reputation as a hive of world-class classical activity.

Once a post-rock collective, now something closer to a live techno machine, Leeds band vessels bring it home to the Brudenell.

Still brilliant. Still weird. Still moving forward. Deerhoof return to Brudenell with their most abrasive album in years.

The White Hotel loads the booth with serious weight, as four of the scene’s most uncompromising figures bring a night of industrial techno, electro and scorched circuitry.

Future Now brings Pussy Riot and a fierce line-up of rising bands to one of the North West’s most forward-thinking venues.