I’m also getting plenty of traffic from people desperate for news on this year’s Chorlton Beer Festival. The host church, St Clement’s on Edge Lane, hasn’t updated its website since last July, which is leading to some confusion.

Thankfully, however, there’s good news: Chorlton Beer Festival will return for its fourth year this summer, on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 July…

The 4th Chorlton Beer Festival:
A celebration of local and international real ales and cider
St Clement’s Church is building on the last three year’s phenomenal success of hosting a Beer Festival in Chorlton. Over 20 real ales will be available to sample along with a collection of traditional ciders. Red and white wine will also be on offer if needed for the partners of real ale connoisseurs. Last year proved to be a fantastic community event, with everyone enjoying the beer, cider, food.
Beer Festival Opening Times:
Friday 11th July: 4.30pm to 11pm
Saturday 12th July: 1pm to 11pm
On Saturday morning and afternoon (until 7.00pm) children are welcome and receive free entry

This information comes from Chorlton’s Facebook group, via Chorlton.co.uk.

By the way, at Stockport Beer Festival earlier this month someone was handing out flyers for a newly established South Manchester event. Didsbury Beer Festival will take place on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 November, with beers and ciders sourced locally and from the Lakelands. They’re currently appealing for underwriters.

I’ve been getting a number of hits lately for “zorbing Manchester”, something I mentioned briefly last September.

For those who think that rolling downhill at 60kmph in a giant plastic bubble is a Good Idea (it’s supposedly a summer pursuit after all), you’ll be glad to hear that the delightfully named Rushton Spencer, near Macclesfield in Cheshire, is home to one of 10 SphereMania zorbing centre around the country.

Call 0844 800 30 45 to check prices and book directly, or visit ExperienceIt.co.uk, which already has a price list online. This ‘South Manchester’ centre is the only location to offer zorbing in the dark (£65 for two people), which sounds even more fun/frightening*.

Check out Craig Hamnett’s Flick photo gallery (feature the above image of three spheres ready to roll), missixty’s review, Pete’s grainy mobile phone video from within a zorb, and a short story in the MEN about last year’s launch event for more information.

* Delete as appropriate

You’ve probably seen it advertised around town, but the deadline for this year’s Best of Manchester Awards is fast approaching so its organisers are making one last push for entries.

The annual competition, hosted by Urbis, ‘celebrates innovation in art, music and fashion’. This deliberately broad scope means art, for example, can include illustration, photography, graphic design as well as fine art and sculpture.

There are also apparently ‘no age limits, no hype and no rules’, so any creative professional living or working in Manchester can enter. Prizes include professional career development, an exhibition in Urbis and a one-off cash prize.

Susie Stubbs, who’s helping to promote the event, has been in touch with an update about this year’s competition:

It’s early days yet as the deadline isn’t until the end of the month, but we’ve already had around 100 entries. Some of the work that’s come in so far is fantastic - the judges are going to have their work cut out.

And the judging panel itself makes for impressive reading: chaired by designer Peter Saville and including Caroline Elleray (head of A&R at Universal Publishing), Miranda Sawyer (Guardian/Observer writer and broadcaster), Luke Bainbridge (Observer Music Monthly), Justin Crawford (The Unabombers/Electriks), Tim Thomas (Blueprint Studios), Claire Lomax (Flux) and Kwong Lee (Castlefield Gallery).

The deadline for entries is 30 June and you can follow the latest from the awards camp at their blog, http://bestofmanchester.wordpress.com/. For more information on entering visit the Best of Manchester section on the Urbis website.

I’ve touched on psychogeography here a few times before and, what with it getting mainstream coverage of late, it’s convenient that Manchester is currently hosting not one but two psychogeography festivals.

Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives, or TRIP for short, runs from Thursday 19 June until Saturday (and beyond) and takes advantage of some of the city’s most recognisable locations, both indoors and out, including…

Thursday, 2pm, the MMU John Dalton Building lobby: Identikit Manchester - Mark Rainey leads a walk themed around corporate chain stores.

Friday, 2pm, outside JD’s Refectory at the MMU John Dalton Building: Bury That Dog - A walk around haunted Manchester with Peter Portland.

Saturday, 3pm, at Whitworth Park: Frank Kickball Jesus presents a psychogeographical ball game - US v UK psychogeographers.

Saturday, 8pm, upstairs at the Britons Protection: A Psychogeographic Cabaret - featuring performance poetry with soundscape and field recordings, plus short films, surprise guests and random acts of subversive joy.

Sunday, 2pm, Café Pop on Oldham Street: Postcards from Nowhere - a wander addressing issues of surveillance and CCTV; all participants will receive a unique piece of GPS art by Max Livesey.

There are also art exhibitions at the Royal Exchange, Nexus Cafe and the Zion Centre, and this is just a small selection of the festival events. Here’s the PDF flyer and visit their homepage for late additions - or read the MEN and Metro previews for their recommendations.

TRIP is also running alongside Manchester’s own psychogeography festival, Get Lost, which is organised by the Loiterers Resistance Movement - visit their site for more information on that.

As an aside, it’s good to see the festival using WordPress.com blogging platform for its homepage. Looks much better than your standard Blogger.com site, doesn’t it?

You may recall that a fringe-of-sorts ran alongside last year’s Manchester International Festival. Its organisers then returned in mid-January, for Not Part of New Years Eve - and they’re now makes a third outing for their own arts festival this summer.

Lasting 10 days (3-12 July), the inaugural festival features 29 events - plus four one-day sub-festivals. Again, Not Part of Festival seeks to gain extra publicity for its theatre, comedy, music, poetry, film and art events by placing them under one name.

The Not Part of website, which has a full brochure, keeps timing out for me but, from yesterday’s newsletter, here are some potential highlights:

• Theatre: Below the Belt @ The Waldorf Hotel
• Theatre: 2 Plays, 2 Writers, 1 Cast @ Adelphi Studio, Salford
• Poetry: Latvian Poets @ Central Library
• Exhibition: Hats off to Cheetham Hill @ The Jewish Museum
• Multi-disciplinary: Not Part of NYE (redux) @ Moho Live
• Art and music: Birds Need Trees (Jim Noir, Aidan Smith etc) @ Urbis

The organisers are asking people to be part of Not Part of - so email them if you can film parts of the festival or just want to volunteer generally. You can also visit Not Part of on Facebook and Myspace, or read a Q&A with organiser Gareth McMann here.