The shortlist for this year’s celebration of all things Manchester was announced last week, and it contains some familiar and (for me at least) not-so-familiar names:

Music:

• Richard Cheetham, who runs the successful High Voltage bands night and monthly fanzine, and is also the booking manager for Night & Day Cafe
• Duncan Sime, aka Red Deer Club, which started out as a great folk night and now continues as a label and DJing guise
• Jasper Wilkinson, part of multimedia collective I Am Your Autopilot, which ‘blends hard-edged electronica with choral sounds, using synthesizers, guitar and multi-layered harmonies’
• Random tip to win: Duncan Sime

Fashion:

• Simon Buckley, co-owner of Tib Street vintage boutique Rags to Bitches (with wife Flic Everett)
• Nabil El-Nayal, recent winner of the Womenswear Award the Graduate Fashion Week 2008
• Hasan Hejazi, who shoots for YQ magazine among others
• Random tip: Nabil El-Nayal

Art:

• Paul Harfleet, who is behind the innovative council flat-based Apartment exhibition space
• Naomi Kashiwagi, shortlisted for ||: Repetition :||, Fugue No.1 in QWERTY for 8 Typewriters, ‘a music and text score composed for typewriters’
• Jai Redman, creative director of UHC (which I’ve written about before) and creator of the Thin Veneer of Democracy, a 16-foot table decorated with a ‘power map’ of Manchester’s corporate and political movers and shakers
• Random tip: Naomi Kashiwagi

More information is available on the Best of Manchester blog and works by the nine shortlisted entrants will be displayed at Urbis from Friday.

The winners, each receiving £2,000  and a tailored professional development package, will be announced at a ceremony at Urbis on Thursday evening.