We’re little over a week away from the debut outing of the Manchester Weekender, a collection of ‘the best of Manchester’s art and culture’. From 1-3 October, for 48 hours, the city showcases itself through an unmanageably large number of events. I thought, therefore, it might be helpful to pick some personal highlights direct from the programme:

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Manchester Art Gallery. A major new exhibition of interactive digital artworks by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, including the world premiere of a large-scale installation People on People, a co-commission with AND festival. The Gallery hosts an evening of live electronica by Marconi Union alongside what’s being billed as ‘interactive activity’ from Lewis Sykes in its glass-roofed atrium.

Un-convention is one of the UK’s most eclectic independent music industry events containing much for those who just love (rather than work in) new music. Employing such unconventional spaces as a barge, Salford Lads’ Club and a church, featuring Bill Drummond, Jarvis Cocker, Jon McClure, Brian Travers and Kevin Cummins – all doing ‘interesting things in the most unexplored places in the city’ – with a travelling circus, music photography projected onto buildings, Colombian Hip Hop, Jah Wobble, the BBC Philharmonic and a brass band as well.

Contemporary Cartography //01 is a pocket map that provides an overview of what makes up the creative ecology of the city (via its contemporary galleries and underground art spaces) and, to celebrate its launch, there are a number of Contemporary Cartography Tours. The map coincides with the launch of Creative Tourist’s new iPhone app. – a guide to the art and culture of Manchester.

See Manchester by water where a family boat party connects the Manchester Ship Canal with the River Irwell and puts food by one of the Northwest’s top chefs, Robert Owen Brown, on the menu.

Hidden Manchester is a very special, secret tour to one of the city’s most spectacular, but rarely seen by the public, buildings created and led by the city’s most popular guide, the broadcaster and historian Jonathan Schofield, especially for the Manchester Weekender.

You can pick your own highlights, or read more about the above events, in Creative Tourist’s Weekender guide. There’s also a pdf guide to the Manchester Weekender.

So you may or may not have noticed that Manchester is a particularly beardy city. Perhaps it’s the cold weather? Whatever the reason, what better way of acknowledging it than by launching a charity calendar?

Beards of Manchester is a calendar featuring the city and some of its hairiest inhabitants. We need 12 magnificent beards for the 2011 calendar, which will be sold at various outlets in Manchester. If you think your beard deserves its own calendar page, snap a picture and send it to info@beardsofmanchester.com by Friday 24 September. We will upload all photos to the beard gallery and invite the best beards (and their owners) to a photo shoot with Manchester-based photographer Gill Moore.

The calendar launches on Thursday 21 October with an exhibition at Common on Edge Street. All profits of the calendar sales go to the Lifeshare charity, which supports homeless people in Manchester and Salford.

With the deadline for submissions just 10 days away, now’s the time to send yours in – or encourage impressively bearded friends, neighbours, family members and colleagues to do so. You and they will join the likes of comedian Justin Moorhouse in the beard gallery and have a chance of being Mr October.

You can follow @BeardsOfMcr on Twitter or ‘like’ the project on the Beards of Manchester Facebook page.

Salford’s annual film festival, once on rocky ground, is back with us bright and early in this, its sixth year. Here’s their call for submissions:

Salford Film Festival is seeking short films and features for the Sixth Salford Film Festival, scheduled for the third week of November 2009, final dates to be confirmed. The Festival prides itself on having a local accent but a truly international perspective: We are particularly keen to receive work with a strong Salford connection (and failing that a Greater Manchester or North West focus), but we welcome submissions from all over the world.

Submission forms and contact details are available from the festival’s website. There’s no submission fee and the deadline’s still a while away – the end of August to be exact. Good luck.

The Manchester Film Co-operative is a non-commercial group that runs a monthly film night at the Kings Arms, one of Manchester’s (well, Salford’s) best pubs. It launched in May 2008 and has since offered a selection of films aiming to ‘challenge current economics, politics and society’:

Screenings are followed by informal discussions led, where possible, by activists and experts. They provide a lively and friendly space in which progressive alternatives and ideas can be explored. The screenings bring together a diverse range of people and groups committed to exploring political alternatives as well as specialist cinema fans. It aims to inform, educate and inspire as many people as possible through film and discussion.

This month’s event – tomorrow, Tuesday 20 January (7.45pm, £3) – features Garbage Warrior, a film that’s apparently about a guy who creates a radical solution for sustainable housing, waste and power. The discussion afterwards will be hosted by Urbed, another Manchester-based co-operative specialising in urban design, renegeration, sustainability and community involvement.

I’ve never heard of Garbage Warrior, nor really any of the other films they’ve shown – but it looks like an interesting group and well worth checking out. It being a co-operative, you can buy a share (for £5) and get involved by proposing films, speakers, themes and the like.

MFC is similar to the Chorlton Film Insitute that I mentioned previously. That institute continues with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead on Thursday 19 February at St Clement’s Church.