There’s an unusual initiative launched in today’s Metro by default vodka brand Smirnoff:

Smirnoff Original Nights is proud to present Night Vision – a groundbreaking new initiative to discover, support and celebrate aspiring nightlife promoters of all kinds, from live music to clubs via cabaret and arts-based nights.

Night Vision operates on two levels:

• A hub on Facebook for advice and information from our expert partners
• A bursary scheme; the chance to apply for funding towards your night

So if you’re a talented promoter or simply have an idea for a great night, go ahead; think big. Be original. Make it happen.

The bursary scheme is particularly appealing – four awards of up to £10,000 are available to anyone in Manchester who wants to set up ‘themed nights, concept clubs or pop-up parties in out-there places’. Judging the entries are two of the city’s biggest clubbing names – Unabombers and the Warehouse Project – plus Urbis and Northern Quarter-based arts mag Flux.

There are also 10 monthly awards of £2,000 available to anyone in the UK.

The deadline for Manchester Night Vision submissions is Friday 3 October, so if you’ve had an event idea at the back of your mind for a while, now’s the time to get it out. Visit the Facebook page for more information.

Almost a year ago, I attended the launch of a project called MELD. Organised by UCLAN in Preston and Sheffield-based Just.b, it called upon journalists and designers to pitch creative ideas with a view to developing them further at workshops.

This year, Just.b returns with its Mapping Creativity project and another invitation to pitch, this time with four awards of £1,000 and one of £25,000 up for grabs:

Manchester Beacon aims to commission an interactive project that drives Manchester’s collective creativity. The commissioned project will use disruptive, open source or social technologies to aggregate and maximise Manchester’s resources. It will catalyse, facilitate and forge links between disconnected communities through a series of physical and virtual activities. It will facilitate better communication between two or more social groups and provide tools to visualise this interaction.

The project will be co-designed with its users and have the potential to live on after the commissioned project is over. The winning project will be supported, not driven, by technology.

The deadline for submissions was last Friday and the b.TWEEN website has now been updated with around 40 ’seed ideas’. It’s worth taking some time to browse the entries and see what some of Manchester’s creative minds are coming up with. These four are of particular interest to me:

• People’s Voice Media – a collaboration between local artists and community reporters
• Arc Space – a cluster of reconditioned computers based in Hulme
• Beyond the Wall – a democratic music scene system, presented by Band on the Wall
• Manchester Underground – a ‘participatory mobile phone film game’

Visitors are invited to vote for their favourite ideas in order to see them developed further.

I’m a big fan of Salford’s independent magazine, having originally spotted its existence way back in 2006 and followed its progress ever since.

Last year it was shortlisted for the prestigious Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism and earlier this year it was named the north west’s Magazine of the Year at the inaugural How-Do Awards – not bad for a part-time concern.

Now it’s celebrating its second full year with a bumper issue number eight. This 100-page special revisits some of the magazine’s previous stories, plus there are fresh profiles on locally born and educated actors Robert Powell and Maxine Peake, as well as features on job prospects at MediaCity:UK and ‘day trips in Salford’. Now there’s a thought…

You can find a copy in several good places in Salford (The King’s Arms, for example) or you can guarantee receiving a copy by subscribing (£20 for six issues). They’ve also just introducted a digital subscription, offering PDF copies of four issues for just £6.

That’s the question posed by Julie Delvaux over at her Notebooks – Los Cuadernos de Julia blog. A year or two ago there were semi-regular events organised by and for Manchester’s blogging community – but in 2008 not even a quiet pint in a dingy pub (the Castle has shut down, after all).

Julie wants to right that wrong and is therefore appealing for anyone interested in going to a monthly/bi-monthly event to get in touch. Craig McGinty and several other Manchester bloggers have already posted comments in response, and a September date is in the offing.

Sarah Hartley over at the MEN’s The Mancunian Way blog has mentioned it too, in post explaining a new initiative she has just set up. Starting this week, she’s going to be highlighting some of Manchester’s ‘internet stars’ – people who have blogs or websites in some way connected to the city.

The profiles, including of this week’s www.manchester-blog.com, will go online as well as in the Saturday edition’s e-view section – so if you want to nominate yourself or someone else, email Sarah now.