The British Library has launched a competition calling for Avant Garde inspired designs from postgraduate students. The challenge to postgraduate creatives has been announced in advance of the Library's forthcoming exhibition, Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937.

The City of Liverpool today unveiled a spectacular programme of events for its year as European Capital of Culture in 2008. As well as homecoming concerts for former Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr who will be performing in June 2008 at Anfield Stadium and the new Liverpool Echo Arena respectively, the programme boasts a healthy mix of music, performing arts, architectural celebrations, community events and visual arts.

A new exhibition at Shipley Art Gallery is capturing changing influences and trends in the north east over the past 60 years. Looking North: Visual Culture from Post War to Present Day runs until November 4 2007 at the Gateshead venue and showcases the region's leading fashion designers, artists, photographers, filmmakers and architects since 1945.

The Jerwood Charitable Foundation has announced details of the Jerwood Moving Image Awards - a major new prize for emerging artists working in digital moving art.

The church containing recently discovered painted panels by Charles Rennie Mackintosh is among seven historic churches to be preserved as part of a newly announced funding package in Scotland.

The latest crop of artists and scientists to set sail for Greenland as part of the Cape Farewell Voyage of the High Arctic departed on Sunday September 23 2007. Aboard the sailing schooner the Nooderlicht a team including comedian Margus Brigestock, novelist Vikram Seth and a host of artists from Britain, Canada, Australia, the US and Japan set sail to explore the frozen wastes of the north and highlight the dangers of climate change.

John Everett Millais was among the most innovative and lauded of 19th century British artists. From a prodigal youth and an anti-establishment bent to acceptance and absorption into the mainstream, his career was long and wildly successful.

The National Maritime Museum is to open a new Atlantic Worlds gallery on November 30 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which was passed by parliament on March 25 1807.

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is currently showing a set of newly discovered watercolours that open up a forgotten vista of Ethiopia. The picture shows 'William Cornwallis Harris (1807-1848), The Triumphal entry into Ankober. On long-term loan to The Fitzwilliam Museum from the estate of the late Quentin Keynes, a watercolour showing a mass celebration of people in a village with large straw and mud buildings with a volcanic looking mountain in the distance'

An arts project that uses everyday items from local people and historical collections and transforms them into stunning images is underway in Portsmouth. The picture shows A Victorian oil painting. © City Forensics.

Fifty young people have been exploring the history of a local road in Leicester through a series of photographs as part of a heritage project and public photography exhibition. Groups of 8-14 year olds from the Leicester Asian Youth Association (LAYA) worked with photographers to create a 3D display of different aspects of Evington Valley Road, part of an industrial area in Leicester, which is home to the LAYA building.

The National Railway Museum in York has announced that it is working alongside the Railway Touring Company and Steam Dreams for the mainline operation of Flying Scotsman. From 2009, a programme of excursions on Flying Scotsman will be on offer throughout Britain.