It seems that June is the time for things to end in Manchester. First up, a couple of exhibitions that conclude this coming Sunday, 13 June:

At the Imperial War Museum North, photographer Don McCullin currently has a major retrospective called Shaped by War. The 75-year-old, not to be confused with Manchester’s own Don McPhee, is best known for his war-time coverage – and in fact in 1968 his Nikon camera stopped a bullet intended for him. The exhibition’s free, and if you fancy doing some pre-visit research, check out the q&a, preview and video interview on CreativeTourist.com.

Then at Mosi, it’s the final weekend of Da Vinci – The Genius, which has been running since November last year. One of the major parts of this exhibition is Secrets of Mona Lisa, containing ‘25 startling revelations’ about his most famous work – and that’s just one of over 200 items on show. Admission here is £7.50 for adults and £5 for concessions, and unless the exhibition’s final weekend is over-run with visitors, you should be able to buy from the Mosi box office on the day.

If you’re after something a bit more… live, this month is also your last chance to see Manchester’s Library Theatre in its current form. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was the first ever production in the theatre way back in 1952 – and it’s also going to be the last. The library is closing for a major overhaul from July, with the Library Theatre Company relocating to Peter Street’s Theatre Royal in 2012. The Grade II listed building, which is Manchester’s oldest surviving theatre building, dating back to 1845, has previously been the Royal Cinema and Royal Bingo, and until recently was a particularly unregal nightclub. Glad to see it’s finally being restored to (hopefully) its former glory.

Photo: Auditorium of the Theatre Royal in 1980 while being used for bingo. Courtesy of Ted Bottle

Urbis’ Videogame Nation ended yesterday – surely one of the Urbis exhibition centre’s most successful outings to date – but another great-looking show is little over a week away:

Show & Tell is an exhibition by the Urbis Creatives art collective; a collective comprised of Urbis staff. The exhibition will give the Urbis team a chance to show their work and tell the visitors about what they do outside of the creative environment of Urbis. It will comprise of many different disciplines from photography to illustration, painting and also projects the members are involved in such as community work and music events.

You can get a sneak peak of the kind of talent on show by reading more about Urbis Creatives artists. Show & Tell opens on Tuesday 29 September and runs until 12 October.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t write about Urbis without mentioning the potential transfer of one of Preston’s star attractions, the National Football Museum, over here in 2010. I’m sure it would be a great addition to this football-rich city – although Kate over at the Manchizzle expressed the other side of the argument concisely: ‘Art 0, Football 1′.

Nope, this isn’t a national version of Risk. Cube gallery and the Redeye photography network (plus Marketing Manchester and DLA Piper) want you to capture the city in the photographic sense.

The incentive is one of 10 awards of £500 (one of which will be decided by the People), plus the chance to have your images displayed in Cube on Portland Street from 28 March until 9 April. In fact, every submitted image – ’so long as it’s legal and decent’ (in terms of quality or nakedness, I wonder) – will be exhibited, which is a great extra incentive to enter. You’ve only got one entry though so don’t waste it.

The 10 winners will also have their photographs reproduced and distributed throughout the city as postcards, and they’ll receive limited edition prints in a commemorative book.

The competition’s open to both professionals and non-professionals, and the deadline’s fast approaching: Friday 20 February. See the Capture Manchester website for full details.

[Hat-tip to How-Do]

I was just reading Mark Page’s excellent Manchester Photography blog and spotted OldSalford.co.uk, a new photo archive site.

It exists ‘to store memories and photographs of the past and present from Salford and the surrounding areas’ (Eccles, Worseley, Pendlebury, Swinton and Bolton) – including the one above, of Broughton Suspension Bridge, which was built in 1888 and lasted until 1914.

There are dozens of photos and captions already on the site but there’s also an appeal for more, and in particular those on the ‘most wanted’ list:

• Harry Ramsdens, off Regent Road – Now demolished
• Old NatWest Bank, Broad Street – Now Security Office
• Old Salford Crescent Police Station – Before boarding up
• Old Swinton Police Station – Now demolished
• Old Salford Market / Precinct
• Langworthy Road – before current upgrading
• Yates’s Swinton Precinct – before its closure

Contact them or post on their forum if you’ve got something to share or are looking for specific images.