Week ahead: Great Yorkshire Show will go on in virtual form

CORONAVIRUS

Beauty salons, nail bars, tattoo and massage studios, spas and physical therapy businesses will be able to reopen on Monday in a further easing of lockdown restrictions by the Government.

Those visiting are likely to notice changes including practitioners wearing clear visors where two metre social distancing cannot be maintained.

For make-up artists and those carrying out treatments including facial waxing, the wait to start up again continues, with the advice stating that these services should not be provided due to a greater risk of Covid-19 transmission.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Office for Budget Responsibility will publish its latest fiscal sustainability report, focusing on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

The report will present three alternative scenarios for the economy and public finances in the medium-term, taking into account the decline in GDP.

Later in the week, former health and foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt will speak at an event by the Institute for Government thinktank exploring the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Hunt has raised concerns about the Government’s reaction and will discuss on Thursday how the NHS has responded to the crisis, what can be done to ensure that the UK is ready for a potential second wave and what lessons can be learned from other countries.

ENTERTAINMENT

In the year that the Proms turns 125, the coronavirus outbreak has changed the goalposts, and the classical music season is being reconceived in a different format.

Beginning on July 17, the programme of music will feature concerts from the past, delving into the BBC archives.

From August 28, it is hoped the final two weeks of the season will feature musicians performing at the Royal Albert Hall, depending on the latest Government advice.

The season will launch with a mash-up of Beethoven’s symphonies to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

The commission has been recorded in lockdown by a Grand Virtual Orchestra formed of around 350 musicians from the BBC’s performing orchestras and choirs.

Elsewhere in the entertainment industry, winners of the 2020 British Academy Television Craft Awards will be revealed on Friday.

The awards reward the best in TV craft and programmes broadcast in the UK in 2019.

VIRTUAL EVENTS

Two of the most popular events in Yorkshire’s summer calendar will be held virtually this week.

In a first in its long history, the Great Yorkshire Show will go virtual with a schedule of online events between Tuesday and Thursday.

As in previous years, the show will champion and celebrate farming, good and the countryside; people will be taken behind the scenes onto farms, workshops and with food producers and there will also be a series of performances and demonstrations.

There’s another virtual treat in store later in the week for festival lovers, as the Yorkshire Dales Food and Drink Festival has also moved online.

For its fifth birthday year, the event will include cookery demonstrations, music performances, an interactive cook-along and a charity auction. It will take place virtually on Saturday and Sunday.

Meanwhile, Scarborough’s Seafest, an annual maritime celebration, which was due to take place over the coming weekend, has been cancelled until next year.

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