GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL

The Left Field Stage

Worthy Farm, Somerset

June 24-28

GLASTONBURY may have become a corporate playground in recent years but there’s still plenty for those on the left to enjoy. Protest singer-songwriter Billy Bragg resumes his curation of the Left Field stage with another dose of music, comedy and panel discussions. Housing campaigner and Focus E15 mum Jasmin Stone, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka, former London mayor Ken Livingstone and representatives from Greece’s Syriza party will be among those tasked with measuring up to post-election realities, while Iranian-born stand-up comedian Shappi Khorsandi will provide some light relief. glastonburyfestivals.co.uk

LONDON MUSIC

Markos Vamvakaris : The Patriarch of Rebetiko

Barbican Hall, Silk Street, EC2

June 11

Rebetiko — the underground, urban folk music of the 1920s and ’30s — has come to symbolise much of Greece. Often dealing with the hardships of immigrant life, petty crime and drug taking , it was banned by the fascist junta in the 1970s. This concert pays tribute to one of its legends Markos Vamvakaris and features a stellar line-up of Greek musicians along with readings from Vamvakaris’s diary recited by Alex Kapranos,  the Franz Ferdinand frontman, himself of Greek descent.barbican.org.uk

MANCHESTER THEATRE

The Skriker

Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann’s Square

July 1-August 1

This revival of Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker for the Manchester International Festival of Theatre features the great Maxine Peake in a play which is a collision between an ancient fairy story and a portrait of a fractured England. It’s set in a broken world where two sisters meet an extraordinary creature, the Skriker. A shapeshifter, she can be an old woman, a child or a death portent. A faerie come from the underworld, she aims to pursue and entrap them, through time and space, through this world and her own...Absolutely not to be missed, the production features specially commissioned music by Nico Muhly and Antony of Antony and the Johnsons.royalexchange.co.uk

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE PHOTOGRAPHY

For Ever Amber

Laing Art Gallery, New Bridge Street

June 27 – September 19

THIS exhibition is the first major retrospective  of the great Amber Collective who, for the last 45 years, have produced groundbreaking work at their base in the Side Gallery in Newcastle. It includes films and photographs by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Graham Smith, Chris Killip, Martine Franck, John Davies and Tish Murtha alongside contemporary international work which documents the vernacular and cultural life of working-class and marginalised communities in north-east England. Don’t miss.twmuseums.org.uk