5 things you won't want to miss in May

This month's exhibition and theatrical highlights from Liverpool, Manchester and across the North West

This month marks a year since Liverpool hosted Eurovision on behalf of Ukraine, the city awash with yellow and blue for a glorious couple of weeks when it suddenly became completely normal to wear full face-paint in public or get tipsy on Boom Bang a Bang cocktails. But there’s no need to sit at home feeling all nostalgic - the Liverpool Loves Eurovision festival kicks off in just over a week. It’s one of the five highlights featured in this newsletter along with some other suggestions of how to spend your time.

May is also Stored Honey’s first birthday, which seemed a good time to take stock of where we are and where we want to get to. It’s been an exciting 12 months of immersion in the North West arts and culture scene, and for me personally a reminder of why I loved my earlier roles as Arts Editor of the Liverpool Daily Post and later the Liverpool Echo. When the Post closed 10 years ago, I had to just be grateful for the five years I spent doing the best job in the world and accept the media industry was changing. So to be able to spend a chunk of my week working on Stored Honey is genuinely a joy and a privilege.

A traditional Ukrainian Soloveiko Songbird visiting Liverpool for Eurovision 2023

As well as launching a second weekly send to all subscribers - a new arts and culture news bulletin on Tuesdays - I will be taking a closer look at the exclusive content that you as paid members receive each month. You are Stored Honey’s biggest supporters and every one of you helps ensure that I am able to continue celebrating the region’s incredible arts scene in this newsletter. Thank you. I’m also pleased to share that the Stored Honey podcast is returning after a break to line up some brilliant guests - and to make it available on Spotify. You will receive access advance to all episodes before they are made available to the rest of our subscribers and the wider public.

All this means that you will be receiving quite a lot of emails from me this week - but I will rearrange the publication schedule for June to ensure that your extra content is spread out throughout the month from now on and doesn’t fill up your inbox.

This monthly highlights edition of Stored Honey is exclusively for paid members, so if you’ve had it forwarded to you by a friend and would like to receive it direct to your inbox in future, you can subscribe using this handy button…