The broad philosophy of this legacy programme is to provide a definitive parsec-scale, micro Jansky sensitivity set of radio images for a large sample of well-known galaxies in the nearby Universe. As such this project will both address numerous key science questions regarding SF and activity in galaxies and is specifically designed to be a lasting Legacy data-set for the wider community, with the sample selected to maximize multi-wavelength coverage and consequently the amount of future legacy science achievable. The project consists of two closely related samples: a moderately deep snapshot survey of an unbiased sample of 280 galaxies selected from the Palomar Bright Galaxies Survey (Ho et al 1997), and an extremely deep survey of a nearby sub-set of 6 galaxies selected from the statistical sample to encompass the entire range of luminosities, scales and galaxy-types. The two sets of observations are highly complementary: the larger statistical sample will mainly probe the nuclear AGN and higher surface brightness starburst regions over all galaxy types, with large enough numbers that we can determine the way in which AGN and SF emission varies with galaxy type, and how the two emission processes interact. The deep sample will also sample a range of galaxy types in an unbiased, although not quite statistically complete manner, allowing for a much more detailed study of, e.g. starburst and low luminosity AGN jet emission. Thus it will be possible to study the physics of the interaction between AGN emission and SF in much greater detail with the deep sample.