BEFORE the degree shows absorb all your funds for purchasing art - carefully salted away like Christmas Club savings by all thinking Herald readers, no doubt - make a visit to the latest show at Project Ability in Glasgow.

Living with the Sea, which opened yesterday, is an inspiring exhibition full of colour and surprises, but then that's pretty much the norm for everything you see at their premises in Albion Street. What is particularly glorious about this example of the fruits of the organisation's work with people who have learning disabilities is its scope and focus.

In partnership with Key Housing, Project Ability journeyed from its Glasgow stamping ground to work with a group in Thurso. Back on the Clyde, research trips ranged from New Lanark to Dumbarton Castle and Bute. The result is a show that, despite the diversity of the featured media, is thematically coherent and includes some very familiar names from the Project Ability stable as well as some brand new ones.

As you arrive at the space, among the cluster of ceramics that greet you is a striking, stark, four-funnelled Titanic by John Cocozza. Berthed alongside it are two much friendlier craft by Cameron Morgan. Paddle Steamer and Love Boat are much more cheerily broad in the beam. Twins Lorna and Letitia Robertson show a pair of boats on which they have, appropriately, shared glazes, and their prints of a catalogue of different vessels look down upon the ceramics from an adjacent wall. Tommy Mason, whose crayon drawing Boat on the Sea is the image used for publicity for the show, also shows two bright light-yellow and blue ceramic boats.

Waves, docksides and coastlines, the Clydeside cranes, the quayside in Scrabster, ferries, lifeboats and trawlers are all documented, as well as shells on the shore and the beasts of the ocean: Stephen Riley's vibrant Moby Dick and Robert Reddick's even more clearly narrative vicious shark drawings. The sense of involvement in the subject matter that the title of the show suggests is palpable and it is clear that the Caithness artists have influenced the Lowlanders. The work is also cleverly displayed to show 100 pieces of work in the gallery, hung across the space like washing in the wind - or, more pertinently, like sails or nets.

Living with the Sea is open Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm, at 18 Albion Street, Glasgow until July 21.

ITIS an oft overlooked fixture in Scotland's classical calendar - at least by us spoiled Central Belters - but the annual opera at Haddo House in Aberdeenshire is an important event, not least because of its longevity. A north-east cousin to the Edinburgh Festival in its post-war incarnation, the Haddo Choral Society celebrates 60 years of continuous service with performances of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus at the end of this week. Its founder, Lady Aberdeen (aka June Gordon), no longer conducts the choir (her 90th birthday was marked with a performance of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius a couple of years ago), but the event still attracts star names.

This production is directed by Peter Mulloy, artistic director of the Carl Rosa Opera Company, and conducted by William Conway. An unusual part of Mulloy's approach is to have narration throughout by Beverley Klein in a trouser role as Prince Orlovsky. Frankly, a bit of assistance through the disguises of the plot sounds a wise move.

Die Fledermaus, Haddo House, by Tarves, Thursday to Saturday at 7.30pm. Tickets, priced GBP18 and GBP22, from 01651 851111 or 01224 641122.

ONTHE Craft Trail Map supplied for the Ayrshire Open Studio Weekend, "Glasgow" is a presence only at the margins, which is the sort of selfawareness the artists of Ayrshire and Arran have always shown. The island has its own circuit - a coastal route taking in the work of Julie Gurr, Ruth Mae, Ruth Yates, Tessa Smith, Douglas Donaldson and the Burnside Gallery in Brodick - while three other routes take you from West Kilbride to Irvine, from Stewarton down to Cumnock, or from Ayr all the way to Barrhill, leaving Troon and Prestwick oddly stranded in the middle.

The message is clear, though: this is a thriving arts and crafts community, and today and tomorrow the artists and galleries are throwing open their doors to visitors, even more so than they usually do.

Visit www. craftayrshire. org or call 01563 554341 for more information.

ANY DAY now I expect the tap on the shoulder from the boss. The message will be unequivocal: "We're taking you off the Nutini case, Keith. You're too close to it." For the moment though, this is what you need to know. Charismatic Carnegie Hallconquering teenage singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini, pictured, he of the previously lauded genre and era-defying tonsils, is coming to the end of a run of gigs in small venues with his exemplary accompanists Jim Duguid and Donny Little. If you live in the northern portion of this nation you should be forming an orderly queue at Tunnels, Aberdeen, tonight, and if you are from nearer the lad's Paisley birthplace, you'll be at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow tomorrow.

By next month his single, Last Request, will be on rotation on the radio; the album, These Streets, will be playing in every high street boutique; and the T in the Park herd at Balado will be lapping him up. But you will have seen him first, and some of the most attractive members of the human race, with the most expensive hair and clad in the coolest threads, will look on you with new respect. Or you could trying suing me.