1. Museum Milk Wellcome Collection, London NW1, 30 March-10 September Whiter than white, nature’s best food, the essence of human kindness: milk, as liquid and metaphor, gets its first ever show at the Wellcome Collection. Cow to farm to industry propaganda, mother’s milk to artificial formula, this exhibition explores the way that science, politics and economics have helped establish milk’s central role in western life. And with a Wellcome speciality – medieval jugs to Dutch cow creamers, 19th-century paintings to video: the dairy, and the drink, in art. Laura Cumming 2. Pop The Beatles’ Liverpool walk Meet Ken Dodd statue, Lime Street station, Liverpool, 22 March, 1pm Marking 60 years since the Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me, this guided two-hour Liverpool traipse takes in the Cavern club, the Eleanor Rigby statue, George and Paul’s school, “the shabby flat where John Lennon dossed” and “Brian Epstein’s rather more comfortable apartment”. Host Ed Glinert is an accomplished author and walk leader who specialises in music and politics. Book via Eventbrite. Kitty Empire 3. Performance Norfolk and Norwich festival welcome weekend 13-14 May The festival’s first welcome weekend, in Norfolk city centre, merrily mixes circus, dance, comedy and theatre. Gorilla Circus’s Unity offers aerial acrobatics, wire-walking, poetry – and hair-hanging. Candoco Dance and choreographer Jamaal Burkmar present New Work, duets specially created for unusual outdoor spaces, which will be performed by disabled and non-disabled dancers. In Fussy Foodies: The Game Show Part 2, Just More Productions use food to tell histories interactively. Susannah Clapp 4. Art National Portrait Gallery reopening and Tate Britain rehang London, from 22 June and 23 May respectively After three years, a massive refurbishment and £35.5m (not to mention having to return its Sackler cash), the National Portrait Gallery finally reopens to the public on 22 June. In addition to all the old familiar portraits, from the Tudors to today, there will be a new entrance on Ross Place, a new Blavatnik Wing and sweeping top-lit spaces for a 21st-century rehang, to include more photography and more women. Which is exactly what Tate Britain also offers with its first rehang in a decade, opening 23 May, with a belated emphasis on work by women and artists of colour, including 70 recently acquired artworks by such pioneers as Derek Jarman, Kim Lim and Donald Locke. Both institutions are promising something of a revolution. LC 5. Classical Re:Sound Manchester, Nottingham and London, 20-22 March ‘How to tell a story through opera” is the promise of Streetwise Opera, working with people who have experienced homelessness, as they join forces with the BBC Concert Orchestra and top choral group the Sixteen in a variety of workshops and performances under the title Re:Sound. These run prior to a paid-for event, Voices of Our Cities, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 26 March. Tickets for the free events need to be reserved. Fiona Maddocks 6. Performance The return of Little Amal London, 29 March & 2 April “Little” Amal is 3.5 metres high: her effect is mighty. The Syrian refugee puppet returns to London on 29 March and 2 April, raising funds for displaced children, leading an interfaith celebration. With puppeteers glimpsed, like hearts, inside her chest, she will parade with Ramadan-inspired lanterns, be serenaded by gospel choirs, hear the story of Passover, and be greeted at St Paul’s by young refugees. “Amal” means “hope”: she has never been more needed. SC 7. Art Larry Achiampong: Wayfinder Baltic Gateshead, 20 May-29 October Wayfinder (2022), Achiampong’s great feature-length film, is screening for five months at the Baltic in all its poetic beauty. The British-Ghanaian artist follows a young girl’s intrepid journey across England, from Hadrian’s Wall all the way down to London and Margate. Along the way she meets unnamed narrators whose stories combine to present a contemporary Chaucerian pilgrimage. Accompanying this Afrofuturist pastoralism will be more of Achiampong’s videos, photographs and sculptures. And as if all that was not enough, Hew Locke’s stupendous array of lifesize figures, The Procession, has arrived from Tate Britain and been installed at Baltic too (until 11 June) – a carnivalesque spectacle connecting the themes of greed, race and politics. LC 8. Pop Skaar The Old Blue Last, London EC2, 9 May Pop singer Hilde Skaar (pronounced “score”) has been nominated for two Spellemannprisen in her native Norway (the equivalent of the Grammys). It’s hard to compute how this versatile Scandinavian is playing such a small gig with two albums, a Netflix theme tune (for 2019’s Home for Christmas) and a new, beat-driven direction under her belt. Recent single Something Like This tackles mental health, but it’s all tunnel-end light. KE 9. Photography Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 17 June-10 September The prestigious photography prize returns to the SNPG with 51 portraits by 36 international artists. Look out for famous faces, including heroic footballer and activist Marcus Rashford and Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard. But this year’s winner is not about stars so much as ordinary people living confined lives in lockdown: Clémentine Schneidermann’s modest shots of her Welsh neighbour in the acclaimed series Laundry Day. LC 10. Classical Regent Hall spring brass festival Regent Hall, London W1, 24-31 March An array of ensembles perform in the Victorian former roller skating rink, bought by the Salvation Army in 1882 and now a welcome centre for all, in the heart of London’s West End, with a full programme of music throughout the year, most of it free. For lovers of brass bands, this spring event is a treat. Highlights on 24 March: Royal Welsh College of Music Brass Band, 1pm; Guards Brass, 3pm; the Household Troops Band of the Salvation Army, 7.30pm. 26 March: the Central Band of the Royal Air Force Brass Quintet & Trombone Ensemble, 3pm. 28 March: Regent Hall Band open rehearsal, 7.30pm. 31 March: Band of the Scots Guards brass ensemble, 1pm. FM 11. Comedy TV show recordings, from Joe Lycett to Ted Hill Various venues and dates Want to see a big-name comedian in 2023? Be prepared to shell out – north of £35 to see Peter Kay, to take one example. A cunning way of reducing this to zero is to visit the SRO Audiences website and bag a free seat for the recording of a TV show. Late Night Lycett records on Friday nights from 31 March to 28 April at the Bond in Birmingham. On a smaller scale, on 27 March the Bedford in Balham, south London, hosts up-and-comer Ted Hill explaining how every US president saved his life, followed by a double bill of Isabelle Farah and Pete Heat. Killian Fox 12. Art Liverpool Biennial 10 June-17 September One of the largest biennials in the world, now in its 12th edition, this massive festival of contemporary art is taking the history of Liverpool itself as this year’s theme. New commissions and recent artworks focusing on sea, wind, shipping and the slave trade will appear in venues from Tate Liverpool to the city’s Victoria Gallery & Museum. Participating artists include the award-winning photographer Melanie Manchot, painter Charmaine Watkiss and the French-Caribbean poet and film-maker Julien Creuzet. LC 13. Pop Henry Parker + dbh + Jennifer Reid Band on the Wall, Manchester, 22 April, 4pm This Manchester venue reopened after a major redevelopment last year and hosts regular free club nights, jazz workshops, open decks and gigs. Promoted by contemporary folk specialists Choir of Outsiders, this bill features metaller turned Bert Jansch acolyte Parker, whose 2021 folk LP Lammas Fair was highly starred. Solo instrumental guitarist dbh lends mellifluous support alongside Reid, whose a cappella Manchester broadside ballads are delivered in the spirit of a working-class continuum. KE 14. Art Saint Francis of Assisi National Gallery, London, 6 May-30 July The beloved animal-friendly saint gets a free show to himself, curated by Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery. Painted images appear alongside medieval panels, relics, illuminated manuscripts and even modern-day films. Look out especially for imaginary portraits of Francis by Botticelli, Zurbarán and Caravaggio, not to mention Stanley Spencer’s cuddlesome visionary preaching to a congregation of ducks in Berkshire. LC 15. Classical Classical Cafe in Cardiff Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, 27-30 March A series of free events (check out the term-time programme for the rest of the year too) at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama exploring different instruments – woodwind, harp, guitar and piano – “as the sun sets over Bute Park”, as the website promises. No sun guaranteed, but expert performances by RWCMD students in a relaxed environment are sure to give pleasure. Carne foyer, 6pm. FM 16. Art Sarah Sze Old Waiting Room, Peckham Rye station, London SE15, 19 May-17 September Another haunting Artangel commission, matching the acclaimed artist with a colossal waiting room that has been boarded up for 50 years inside an active London station. Sze’s site-specific installations speak to place and time, with their complex arrangements of everyday objects, photographs, lights and flickering images. Expect to be immersed, in Zadie Smith’s words, in something like the spilling contents of an opened-up iPhone.