Got weekend plans?

What are you doing this weekend?

All I can say is, your answer had better not be "nothing." There’ll be no better time to get out to see what Charlotte has to offer.

"September is a wonderful month in Charlotte," said Michael Smith, head of Charlotte Center City Partners, at Wednesday’s official kickoff of Charlotte Shout!

Shout is a festival stretching through Sept. 29 that includes more than 200 performances and events at 40 venues around town.

Even if you’re one of those who views the "Shout!" identity as a somewhat meaningless way to package arts events that would most likely be occurring in September anyway, why complain about that?

Take this weekend for starters. Your choices include the Charlotte Film Festival, the Charlotte Dance Festival, the Greek Festival, and Saturday’s "cultural free-for-all" in which nearly every attraction in town has free admission.

Participants: Carolina Raptor Center (10am - Noon), Charlotte Museum of History (10am - 5pm), Discovery Place (9am-11am), Historic Latta Plantation (10am - 5pm), Historic Rosedale (1:30pm - 4:30pm), Levine Museum of the New South (10am - 6pm), McColl Center for Visual Art (11am - 4pm), The Light Factory (9am - 6pm), Wing Haven Gardens & Bird Sanctuary (10am - 5pm) and Mint Hill Arts (10am - 2pm).

And at SouthPark mall, you can catch free music performances all day Saturday: Carolina Voices (11:30am), Chamber Music at St. Peter's (12:05pm), Community School of the Arts (12:35pm), Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra Musician (1:10pm), Afro-American Cultural Center (1:45pm), Charlotte Symphony Quartet (2:20pm), The Gold Standard Chorus (2:55 pm), Charlotte Civic Orchestra (3:30pm) and Martha Connerton/KineticWorks (4:05pm).

Click on www.charlotteshout.com to get details on all these events plus options for the rest of the month.

If you're planning to go out and try something you've never seen here before, please write me and let me know what you think.