SOUTH Cumbria Musical Festival is a wonderful week-long showcase for the area's talented performers, opening on Sunday (March 22) at Ulverston's Coronation Hall with a day of brass classes, culminating in two of the region's top brass bands - Burneside Brass (pictured) and Flookburgh - vying for the Kimberly-Clark Champion Shield.

Brass day is followed by speech, piano, woodwind, strings, choirs, vocals throughout the week, with the grand Gala Night on Saturday, March 28, when performers from all disciplines compete for a valuable performance award in a cabaret setting.

The gala event features the Esther C Croskery and Aprille C Bonner Performance Award, with one of the leading figures in Cumbrian music circles, Mary Powney, adjudicating.

Tickets for Gala Night are available on 01229-584653, or during festival week from the Coronation Hall or by telephone on 07773-403686.

Advance festival programmes are available from Ulverston Library and The Full Octave, Tudor Square, Dalton from the second week of March.

ANOTHER fabulous feast of music is the Mary Wakefield Westmorland Music Festival, which runs in Kendal all this week, hosting the Festival Showcase Concert and Jim Noble Award Finals tomorrow night (Friday, 7pm) at Kendal Town Hall, and Choral Celebration on Saturday at Kendal's St Thomas's Church, led by conductor Justin Doyle (pictured).

AFTER several months of construction, the Solway Wetlands Landscape Partnership Scheme and the RSPB are opening an area especially designed for children at the RSPB Campfield Marsh reserve, 1.5 miles west of Bowness-on-Solway.

The Wetlands Discovery Zone is the latest in a series of new site developments aimed at encouraging all ages to have fun outdoors and discover the wildlife of the Solway. It will be opened on Tuesday (March 24) by children from Bowness-on-Solway Primary School, who helped to design the space in 2013.

THIS year's Cumbria Drama Festival is an all-comedy programme, staged on Saturday at the Victoria Hall, Grange-over-Sands. The festival - one of more than 30 preliminary rounds of the All England Theatre Festival - opens with two afternoon performances from 3pm - Burton Drama Society performing Twilight Robbery and Cockermouth Amateur Dramatic Society with Last Tango in Little Grimley. The evening session runs from 7pm, with Swarthmoor Drama Group concluding the evening with Too Long An Autumn. Tickets at the door.

Sing into Spring with Ambleside’s very own all women acapella group, the Amblesingers at Ambleside Parish Centre on Saturday, from 2.30pm-4pm with a workshop followed by a performance. The fun-loving Amblesingers have been singing together for more than 10 years and are organising the relaxed and informal event for anyone who fancies having a go at singing three to five part harmonies or just enjoys singing for fun. No musical expertise is necessary. Tickets on 015394-31794.

Why not bag a bargain at auction this Saturday. Flowering trees, shrubs and roses, dwarf and ornamental conifers, fruit trees, bushes and plants, hedging and screening and perennial plants are being sold at 11am at NWA’s Junction 36 Rural Auction Centre, Crooklands, Milnthorpe. Auctioneer Bill Nelson and nurseryman Richard Lambert will be on hand to offer help and advice. For more information visit www.nwauctions.co.uk or telephone 015395-66200.