The award-winning Whitaker Gallery & Museum is a multi-purpose venue which celebrates the area’s varied and amazing heritage whilst providing a dynamic, challenging and diverse programme of events, exhibitions and education-based activities. And the cafe’s pretty good too!
Blackburn’s Confessional Festival turns ten, celebrating with two days of live music set beneath the stained glass and vaulted stonework of Holy Trinity Church.
From £20
Blending vintage charm with a bold new perspective, award-winner Tanuja Amarasuriya directs a sharp, stylish revival of the Noël Coward classic.
From £15.00
Anna Jordan’s Bruntwood Prize-winning play returns to the North – a raw, tender story of lost childhood, love and survival. Unmissable.
From £15.00
A glittering night of cabaret, circus and fairytales from Ember & the Vixens – part escapist fantasy, part empowering spectacle.
From £18.00
UrbanArtistry is back for a second season starting with a behind the scenes account of Rome’s most wanted street artist in The Art of Disobedience.
From £7.50
A weekend of outback horror, petro-fueled wastelands, and Australian icons at Cultplex this September.
From £6.50
Paradise Works presents ‘Coming Soon’, a new solo show of evocative collaged paintings from Joseph O’Rourke.
Free entry
Ember & the Vixens bring their creepiest cabaret yet to Fairfield Social Club just in time for spooky season.
From £18.00
The Eagle and Child in Ramsbottom does what good pubs do best, and more.
Now ten years old, this double market combines a farmers’ market and a craft fair and provides the perfect excuse to visit the picturesque town of Ramsbottom, which nestles in the Lancashire foothills to the north of Manchester.
Helmed by chef-owners Fiona and Joe Botham, this tapas restaurant in Ramsbottom serves exclusively Spanish drinks and some of the best small plates going.
Colleen’s is a casual dining neighbourhood restaurant in the heart of Ramsbottom serving seasonal dishes.
Sports venue in Ramsbottom and home to the annual Ramsbottom Festival.
Burnley’s Panopticon, ‘Singing Ringing Tree’, is a unique musical sculpture which overlooks Burnley from its position high above the town on Crown Point. Constructed from pipes of galvanised steel stacked in layers, this Panopticon takes the form of a tree bending to the winds and harnesses the energy of those winds to produce a low, tuneful song.
Historic house, art gallery and museum. Museum houses a variety of displays, encompassing natural history, Egyptology, local history, textiles, decorative art and regional furniture. Art gallery is focused on Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art, “with some earlier paintings as well”.
Burrs Country Park lies on the River Irwell covering an area of 36 hectares of scenic countryside, one mile northwest of Bury town centre.
The Weavers Triangle is a modern name for an area on the banks of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal that was once at the heart of Burnley’s textile industry. The name was first used in the 1970s, as interest developed in preserving Burnley’s industrial heritage, and refers to the roughly triangular shape of the region.
Burnley Mechanics Theatre showcases an array of talent; touring shows and local theatre also.
Glassmonkey Studio is the largest glass fusing studio in the area. The studio is home to a gallery selling handmade fused glassware jewellery, art and greeting cards. They also host regular workshops for fused glass, soap making, enamelling, and silver clay jewellery making.
Affectionately referred to as the ‘Downton of the North’, Gawthorpe Hall was redesigned in the 1850s by Sir Charles Barry, designer of the Houses of Parliament and the ‘real’ Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle.
Chocolate fountains, beautiful batiks and medieval marginalia - this month's supersized Exhibitions Guide has it all.
"Tours, tours, tours!" If this month's Tours and Activities guide were a sentient speaking person, this is what it would say.
September and beyond brings culture, theatre, disgusting history and loads of fun.
The autumn leaves might be falling already, but the harvest is plentiful as the live literature scene gets back into the swing of things after a summer break...
This season’s theatre is gloriously eclectic: from radical cabaret and reinvented classics to new musicals and boundary-pushing performance.
Take some eating-out tips from our August guide to food and drink in Manchester and the North.
This month we recommend a season of Film noir, cult Australian movies and a huge celebration of DIY community cinema.
