What good does art ever do?

If you're like me you will have asked yourself this on more than one occasion - often in a gallery.

But once in a while you get art activity that shows a kind of heart; something to restore your faith in humanity.

With this in mind, Saturday 16 April is a key date for your diary.

For one night only, the Green Room hosts Art Junkies, a multi-arts event raising funds for the Manchester Million Appeal in aid of post-Tsunami rebuild in South Asia.

Now the cynical might well say that it takes a Tsunami before an artist - or anyone for that matter - does something worthwhile.

But this isn't the place for cynicism, or the time for apathy - indeed the full whack of the door charge ('5) goes to the appeal.

Ben Reed of Spearfish Ltd is hooking up the visual arts for the event.

'We've got a massive body of artwork in storage which is really, really good,' he says.

'More people should see it and so I spoke to the artists to see if they were prepared to auction it for charity and 90% of artists agreed: great cause, great idea, more than happy.'

So how do the public get involved?

'They'll be posting a lot of the work on the Green Room website prior to the event,' says Reed.

'Then any people who register, we'll give them a paddle, or whatever you call it, and they can come round beforehand, look over the artwork and note what they like."

Contemporary

Given Spearfish's rangy stable of contemporary artists, the pieces up for sale ought to provide an exciting choice.

Reed primes our curiosity: 'A lot of it is quite large.'

All told, the entry charge alone could be the best '5 you spend this year.

Meanwhile, there are a few shows you ought to check. Over at the 8th Day Caf' celebrities are getting dumped on ' literally - with all manner of materials (feathers, wheat, milk, cotton).

These photographs capture some right-on celebs like Michael Stipe and Alanis Morissette gaining valuable exposure for Oxfam's Fair Trade campaign: a case of global goodwill.

Closer to home?

Well Earth Connection may sound like a monumental show commissioned for the imminent G8 summit.

Actually it's a local show with global meaning: the launch of a series of openings through 2005 at Chorlton's Creative Recycling which prides itself on selling environmentally friendly art and design products.

The environment is one of the issues at the root of Marketing Utopia: Communities For Sale, unveiling at the recently opened Basement Arts Caf'.

Concerned with 'new' Manchester's obsession with new build developments, this is the other half of the urban regeneration story, as told by artists using film, photography and poetry.

A point worth noting is that all the aforementioned shows are hosted by smaller and/or independent venues.

Despite their size and unorthodox nature, they deserve to be saluted for their unerring passion and human touch - aspects seldom felt in the traditional, sanitised gallery context.

Overall this makes for a spate of shows with worthy causes.

If art is all too often the risible playground of the self-important perhaps this week offers some fresh perspectives.

Could it be to do with current Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller's recent assertion: 'Art's not about what you make, it's about what you make happen'? Mmm, maybe it's just the advent of springtime.

Art Junkies, Sat 16 @ Green Room, Whitworth Street West, City centre (615 0500). 8pm. '5.

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