You wouldn't know it to look at it, but Canberra has long been a breeding ground for alternative and experimental music.

And now it's time to put the city's artists on an equal footing with the rest of the country.

Ainslie Arts Centre is hosting Weird Frontier, a one-day festival this weekend, celebrating alternative and experimental Australian music of various kinds, featuring two Canberra DJs - Playful Sound and Kangaroo Lifesaver - and eight live acts of various genres, three of which have past or current Canberra links.

Curator Shoeb Ahmad, a musician and head of Canberra independent music label hellosQuare, says the festival is all about exploring "experimental and interesting unique approaches to contemporary modern music", but his main aim is to make it approachable for a general audience as well as those already interested in cutting-edge music.

Ultimately, he wants to showcase exciting Canberra artists on par with performers from around Australia in an audience-friendly setting to attract as wide a range of people as possible.

"It's a great location - Ainslie is perfect," he says.

And Weird Frontier will be a good introduction to newcomers as well as those familiar with the artists and styles represented.

"I don't think it's esoteric: I did think the public needs to be given a good solid entry point," he says.

"Do it in a good location and people will go see the series and enjoy it, it's a great day out."

Weird Frontier's creative producer, Adelaide Rief, says each of the artists on the program adds a twist or challenge to various kinds of music, "adding a unique quality to music-making or musical genres ... The artists work in contemporary or popular genres, taking inspiration from that work."

She says the festival will help people understand how the music is created by the artists and the influences that inspire their work.

"It's very much an entry point, an invitation for people to come and experience something they won't have seen but that is familiar and different at the same time - the discovery of the new," she says.

Former Canberran Becki Whitton, for example, now lives in Melbourne and performs as a solo artist under the name Aphir, using "vocal harmonies and beats to create an ambient mix".

Also from Melbourne are the solo electronic artists Kane Ikin and Beatrice, the experimental pop band No Sister and the bass-driven electronic musician Elisabeth Dixon.

Wives is a Canberra postpunk band with jagged guitars and synthesisers, a sound that Ahmad describes as "minimal but direct". Also from Canberra, the electronic duo p a r k s, made up of Jonathan Corcoran and John Evans, use bass guitars and synthesisers to create lush soundscapes.

And Sydney pianist Monika Brooks is an improvisational pianist playing on the grand piano who "touches on classical and jazz - it's also quite dense".

Besides his musical label, which he has run for the last decade and which includes a range of genres such as classical, jazz, rock and electronic, Ahmad plays in the indie-rock band Agency, the electronic jazz band Tangents and the improvised electronic music group Spartak. He's also been involved in organising music events including You Are Here and, with Adelaide Rief, who is also the creative producer of Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres, the art music festival Confluence.

Rief says, "Shoeb and I share a lot of interest in contemporary music, music that is perhaps less well known, and we felt this was an opportunity to explore the ways artists were working in challenging popular music today."

She says a program like this ties in well with Ainslie Arts Centre's past as an infants' school - a place of inquiry and education and music.

"It acknowledges that history."

It also puts a focus, she says, on what's going on in contemporary music - with particular attention on female musicians, Canberra artists and work that isn't always readily defined or easy to find. A lot of musicians are taking a "do it yourself" approach to creating, producing and distributing their music, she says, making the exposure in a festival such as this particularly valuable.

The festival will run from 2 to 11pm and the full set list will be posted on the website (agac.com.au).