News flash: I am not cool

I am a fraud. I am misrepresenting myself, living a double life, guilty of perpetrating an online persona that is more than a little out of whack with reality. Actually, there is a gulf so big between the two things that you could drive a fleet of Mack trucks through it. But it’s so easy now, isn’t it? We all have these virtual aliases, a pocket full of glossy digital incarnations which only resemble our real selves if you squint really hard.

Writing about ‘what’s on’ is a young person’s game. Look at the Guardian Guide, with its slavish devotion to niche musicians you’ve never heard of and easy way with slang so laughably unfamiliar you suspect they’ve invented it (also see: The Skinny.) These publications are written by actual young people who care intensely about these things, with a few good fakers trying to hide in the back. And they should be. They know what they are talking about.

When I started this blog, I was young. I had just arrived in this city and was on a mission to map Manchester’s every hidden hangout, coolest surprise, weirdest place. I stayed up all night, so many nights, dancing around rusty machinery in an old cotton mill and then tumbling out into the bleak Mancunian dawn. I saw every important movie on release and plenty of not-remotely-important ones too. I had an insatiable appetite for new music, could go to three or four gigs in a week, and I didn’t even care if there was comfortable seating. Theatre press nights, restaurant launches, readings, art exhibition openings – any occasion attracting the same dubious band of Manc bohemians conjured, as if by magic, with the sound of the cork popping on a bottle of Barefoot (hey guys) – I was there, talking and swigging free horrible wine and going on to the pub to drink and argue and laugh some more, while smoking approximately 46 fags at once. But that was almost ten years ago. Much shit has happened.

So here’s my confession: I am not young. I am not cool, if ever I was. I am not urban. My finger isn’t exactly on the pulse. I listen to Radio 3 just as often as I listen to 6Music. I’m 40 years old, with two children who aren’t even babies anymore. I don’t really drink, and never do drugs or smoke anymore. I go to bed before 10, and get up at 6:30. If it's not on television before 10, I'm not going to see it until I grudgingly shell out for a secondhand box set years after everyone stopped talking about it. I watch Countryfile while wearing fleece (mostly for the excellent, in-depth weather report. But still.) Getting me to leave my house in the farthest reaches of exurbia on a January night, even for a trip down to the pub on the corner with some mates I adore, is like chiselling a barnacle off a rock.

The irony is, now that I’m settled in the hills, I get invited to everything. In UK blog years, Manchizzle (est. 2005) is like the Domesday Book, so I am on every PR list in creation. And then there’s the fact that my day job is also writing about interesting things to do and see and eat in Manchester. So for the past couple of years, the old/reclusive thing, plus the fact that I get paid to write Manchizzle posts for a living (just not here), has meant that I haven’t had much to say on this blog.

I feel like a fraud writing posts like this last one. Because those events were all genuinely enticing ways to spend an evening and I desperately wanted to go to each one of them. Just not as much as I wanted to sit in my perilously cosy red armchair and reread Gaudy Night for the 17th time. I didn’t go to them, and I knew I wouldn’t when I wrote that. But I still wrote about them, so that maybe you could go to them, if you wanted to. But there might be less of that on here for a while.

I’m not saying culture is only for the young. Hell no! It’s just that I’m hunkered down for the winter, and going through a hermitty time in my life, so it seems fake and distasteful to write a blog that doesn’t reflect that. I have no desire to break up with the 'chizz, and I miss blogging more often. So this blog may increasingly not do what it says on the tin.

How exciting.

Image: Guilherme Kardel via Flickr.

The Manchizzle Manchester wish list for 2014

In 2013, some good things happened in this town. We got a listings magazine. We got our first playground in the city centre, beehives on rooftops and more trees in the Northern Quarter. We got several Mexican restaurants, the Rogan show arrived and you can now get a good burger all over the place (and pretty decent barbecue.) We had a glorious, sweltering, iced coffee summer. The Albert Hall opened, and last year's Manchester International Festival was a culturehound's wet dream. The Metrolink network expanded to join up different parts of the city, and though people complain about the trams ceaselessly we are pretty lucky from where I’m sitting. We also happen to have a council that seems to have its head screwed on properly most of the time, and a city that has (so far) weathered austerity better than many other places in the country.

I've already posted about some of the things I'm looking forward to in the city this year. But what would make me even happier? Well, here’s my wishlist for our city of Manchester in 2014. Equal parts possible, improbable and fanciful.

 1. Let the artists have it. What could be a more intelligent and creative use of an empty building than putting it into the hands of some artists who need space and will look after the place too (they’re handy folk)? The Tetley in Leeds looks set to be a huge success, and I’m very excited about the opening of Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Spaces Federation House in March. It would be great to see more happening along these lines around Greater Manchester, in everything from shopfronts to tower blocks.

2. Off-street eating. We suddenly have loads of amazing street food vendors who are based in Manchester, but our weather is still inconveniently shit. So what we need is a place in the city centre for street food traders to come in out of the cold, like Camp and Furnace in Liverpool, or Chelsea Market in NYC… though rumours of Manchester Hawkers and Guerrilla Eats developments in 2014 are worth watching. Also, could Manchester Markets please sort themselves out? I’m not talking about the Piccadilly ones or stuff like Castlefield Artisan market, I mean the big seasonal, “themed” ones. Why do they suck so hard?

3. Shelf improvement. This is the Hail Mary request, as I don’t know who'd be mad enough to open one in the current economic climate, but Manchester would be so much better if it had just one really good, quirky, characterful independent bookstore. Or barring that, some better secondhand options than those stinky, vaguely menacing shops around Shudehill.

4. More green space. Yes, I am always harping on about this. I think I even mentioned it waaay back in 2009 during my an early hashtag experiment on Twitter with #mcrneedsthis, but there it is. A big High Line-ish groundbreaking outdoor public space project would get Manchester attention and tourists flocking, but most importantly it would make the city a nicer place to live. And how about another playground while we’re at it?

5. A lido. Come on, how cool would this be?

6. Trams/trains/buses running later (at least on weekend nights). This curfew is getting ridiculous in a city that is perpetually gunning for “world class” status. And don’t give us that guff about tram drivers needing to sleep too. There’s always some night owl happy to work late for extra money.

7. A more engaged citizenry. Apathy is so freaking tiresome. Let’s all make 2014 the year we can be arsed. More debates, more talks, more protests, more marches. I want a city crackling with dialectic, bristling with informed debate, ringing with ripostes. Some of this stuff happens on Twitter. I’d like to see it happening more in the flesh. You may be angry or depressed about what’s going on in this country right now (I sure as hell know I am) but disengaging isn’t going to do us any good.

That's my list. What's on yours?

2014 in Manchester

Oh sacred magic eight ball, what will 2014 bring us? This year, Cornerhouse will empty out, that iconic curved marquee going dark or advertising cheap payday loans while the arty folk go west to First Street, where HOME is being built. Ah wait, no, looks like the opening has been pushed back to Spring 2015, so enjoy it while you can. I'm having a hard time warming to either the new name or the basic concept of  Cornerhouse not existing anymore, but who knows?  I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Whitworth expansion this Autumn, designed to blur the lines between the gallery and the adjacent, sadly underused park. For other arty upcomings across the North, see Creative Tourist's freshly minted Cultural Calendar.

Traditional pubs are closing, apparently. In recent days The Lass O' Gowrie, The Black Lion in Salford and chef Mark Owen Brown's Mark Addy gastropub have announced closures (at least temporarily.) The Fiction Stroker has a good analysis of the background to the first two closings and the consequences for the city's fringe theatre and performance scenes. What's opening this year? More Mexican, burger and barbecue joints, naturally. A new branch of the Leeds-based Red's True Barbecue is opening soon, and I've heard a rumour about a Pancho's Burritos restaurant that I fervently hope is true.

This spring the new Central Library will open. I'm pretty excited about this. Because, after all the controversy (Book purges! Public streets becoming glassed-in private property!) we get a new library, a more comfortable but still spectaculary old and fancy one with new space for events and children's activities. Let's just hope it's not the only library that's still open in Greater Manchester by 2015. How's yours doing? The little library in Ramsbottom, where I live, is going self-service, and they're apparently turning a substantial chunk of the big one in Bury into a sculpture centre. But hey, they're not closing. Yet.

Image courtesy of Modern Designers.

Review: Manchester Sound: The Massacre

Site specific, immersive new theatre by the usually excellent Library Theatre Company. Happening at a secret location in the Northern Quarter.  Unifying two diverse but interesting moments in Manchester’s history: The Peterloo Massacre and the heyday of Acid House. Manchester Sound: The Massacre was intriguing on many levels, and I sincerely wanted to love it. I trooped off to said secret location full of hope and goodwill. But the play just didn’t work for me.  

First, the good stuff. The staging was bold and effective, with the audience becoming active participants in the gathering, whether it was a rave or a public demonstration. It was alarming the way actors charged around the space, sometimes barrelling right through us, which lent proceedings the right kind of unsettled nervous energy. And the space itself is a real find. It’s full of atmosphere, and it has been used resourcefully. 

But these positives, along with a game cast who gave it their all, weren’t enough to salvage a play with a flawed central analogy. Comparing citizens massacred while peacefully protesting for the right to fully participate in society with raver kids half-assedly agitating for “the right to party” won’t wash, and it just can’t be cemented together with broad platitudes about standing up for what you believe in. It reminds me of the time they closed the smoking lounge at my high school and some kids took to wearing Stars of David cut from packs of Camels. The best thing you can call it is naïve. But you can’t build a strong production on such a shaky foundation.

I say this with affection, but for those of us out in the rest of the world (and even lots of us who were right here in 1989) the Hacienda just wasn’t that big of a deal. Yes, the music and the clothes were new, but anyone who believed Madchester was going to usher in a new era of peace, love and brotherhood was either too young to know better or pilled to the gills. The trouble is, most of 2013’s cultural gatekeepers came of age then, and their nostalgia for the time seems limitless. It’s like they’re all personally invested in the delusion that their cultural 15 minutes "changed the world forever" and seem determined to foist it on the rest of us.

Compounding the trouble was a confused script, full of flat dialogue and predictable laughs. (“Women can be politicians now?” “The Prime Minister’s a woman. She’s a bitch.”) The action happens in parallel to start, switching between 1989 and 1819, which worked fine. But the moment three Peterloo women inexplicably turned up in the loos at the rave and started exclaiming over the condom machine, I lost the narrative thread. It transpired that they were dead and had come back to haunt the apathetic ravers into giving a toss about current events. By the end of the play, I think I worked out that if they failed, the ghosts were doomed to repeat the events of Peterloo for eternity, but this is mostly speculation on my part. And to be honest, I had disengaged from the play by then.

During its theatre-less few years, The Library Theatre has gotten really good at putting on site specific theatre. But in Manchester Sound, a provocative analogy didn’t develop into anything truly meaningful. Kind of like those totally amazing conversations you have in a warehouse at 5am. Yes, I  know, it all seemed very deep at the time.

Image: Stephen Fewell (DJ Liberty) in Manchester Sound: The Massacre by Polly Wiseman, directed by Paul Jepson, presented by the Library Theatre Company (Saturday 8 June - Saturday 6 July 2013). Photo by Kevin Cummins.

Playing out in Manchester: new playground for city centre

Just a quick post to pass on the good news that Manchester city centre is soon to get its first playground thanks to the folks at CityCo. The lack of a dedicated outdoor play area in central Manchester (and the lack of green space generally) has long been a concern of mine; see previous rants here last year and here in 2010. Yes, expanding green space is a tough sell when city centre land is worth so much and everyone from the council on down is hard up for cash. But parks make this city a much more attractive place to live and work.

Navigating the city centre with small children can be a challenging proposition. In the part of Manchester where I live, just 25 minutes outside of the city centre by car, many of the parents I talk to rarely take their kids there, maybe a few times a year for a panto or a big shopping trip. We go a lot more often than that, but mostly our strategy is get in, do what we need to do and get out as quickly as possible. It's easy to understand why. Indoor play is mostly limited to galleries and museums (hats off to the amazing and free Experiment! at MOSI) and any special offerings are usually busy and often require planning ahead. And with  little outdoor space to roam about in, kids make the most of what there is, as a visit to the fountains of Piccadilly Gardens on a hot day will attest. Just having a place like this to go will be a big help.

I noticed the new playground when I was walking to Victoria Station this week. The new street-shaped park will be installed on the riverside in front of Manchester Cathedral, and will effectively create an extension of Cathedral Gardens. Really looking forward to taking my own kids for a play there this spring. Now we just have to keep people from wrecking the place. Hmmm. In the meantime, can we please have a Playful Leeds in Manchester? We like to have fun here too.

Image by Lucho Molina via Flickr.

9 things I wish Manchester could steal from Philly

I recently went to Philadelphia. I wrote a piece about the trip for Creative Tourist that talks a lot about the art museums and the great things you can do there. But I was surprised how much I loved just spending time in the city. Part of it was probably nostalgia; I used to spend a lot of time there as a kid (my mom was from Philly.) Part of it was probably the summery weather we had. But it really is a good place to live. I came back thinking a lot about the different things there that I wish we could replicate in Manchester:

1. One Percent for Art: "In 1959, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (RDA) adopted the first "One Percent for Fine Arts" program in the United States, thus making the commissioning of new works of public art integral to the urban renewal process. For each project built on land acquired from and assembled by the RDA, the selected developer must budget no less than one percent of the total building construction cost toward commissioning original, site-specific works of public art." This is why there is so much good public art all over the city.

2. Living roof bus shelters: Why not?

(Actually, green roofs are all over the place in Philly.)

3. The Mural Arts program. Got a graffiti problem in the neighbourhood? Get the taggers and other community members involved in creating these large-scale street murals. Jane Golden started the work back in 1984. There are now more than 3,000 murals, and it's the largest public art program in the US. Spend some time appreciating them on the Mural Explorer.

4. Community gardens. You see these guys around NYC too. Just a nice way to use otherwise empty land. Some of them are so charming it's almost kind of annoying. Here's a picture of a community garden with a street mural above it, just off Passyunk Avenue in South Philly. Cute overload.

5. Reading Terminal Market. The granddaddy of all food halls. Where I ate an impossible to re-create anywhere else meal of jambalaya (Beck's Cajun Cafe) with a chocolate egg cream (Hershel's East Side Deli), followed by an Amish apple dumpling (Dutch Eating Place). Then I went for a lie down. There was also a really cool place selling only cookbooks which I spent far too long wandering around.

6. Philly Beer Week - There's a fantastic beer community in this town, with lots of craft brewers and they all pull together for this highly popular event that takes over the bars and breweries of the city. Still angry about the fact that my jetlag meant I missed a rare chance to try gypsy brewer Mikkeller's beer. Ah well. Watch this video about Benjamin Franklin drinking beer.



7. Parks, parks and more parks. Seems like everywhere I went in that city I was bumping into a large, leafy park. Or a park with a huge art show happening in it. Or a park with a busking bluegrass band (who were really good). Or a nice playground. Man, the dogs even have their own parks. Ahem, Manchester.

8. The grid. City planning! It means there's a street grid, so you always know where you are. This is something we could never replicate, obviously, but I still covet it.

9. A riverside trail. People don't appreciate stuff like the city's beautiful trail along the Schuylkill River enough. And again, I know that pre-colonial cities have a few more limits on what can go where. But I wish our waterways in the city centre were more accessible or generally made more of, instead of being hidden away, paved over or fenced off. (Though hats off to CityCo and The Piccadilly Partnership and their efforts to green up the place, and for helping cool stuff like Atelier[zero] happen). Anyway, my family and I used to go here a lot. Here's a picture of me and my brother feeding some geese near Kelly Drive.

Images: (from top) Philadelphia skyline by B. Krist for Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation; green bus shelter roof courtesy Roofmeadow; Mural at 17th and South by Trishylicious via Flickr, all others me. Full disclosure: I travelled to Philly as the guest of GPTMC and the Sofitel, whose crispy breakfast bacon haunts my dreams. If you want to visit Philly too, all the info you need's here.

The City Debate and the future of Manchester

Hoo boy, is this a long post. But I had so much to say about FutureEverything’s City Debate last Friday, I just couldn’t restrain myself. For another perspective, I’ll point you in the direction of Inside The M60's coverage and blogger Sarah Hartley, who has a very interesting analysis. As a snotty aside, I also find it surprising that a serious debate about the future of Manchester with some pretty big bigshots held at Manchester Business School didn’t rate either coverage by the local press or participation from the city council (though Sir Howard Bernstein did record a video statement.) But what do I know?

Big props to FutureEverything for organising what was a very ambitious and largely successful event. The format was interesting, but I think there were simply too many people taking part. I'm sure this came out of a well-meaning desire to offer a really broad slate of views. And it was great that such a range of people were there. Unfortunately, having so many panelists made the event longer and slower to get down to brass tacks, as everyone read through their statements and responded to questions from a couple of specially-selected lead questioners. For me, it wasn’t until the questions were opened to the floor that things really got interesting.

Two big things I took away from the event: One is a growing sense of frustration from many of the people in the audience and even a few of us on the panel. For all the horn-tooting about the meteoric rise of the original modern city, the reality is that we’ve just seen a period of tremendous growth which seems to have completely passed by most of the people who live here, especially those in poorer outlying neighbourhoods. It was clear that that many of us would specifically like the people in charge to focus their innovating on making sure this doesn’t keep happening. Patsy Hodson of the Manchester Communication Academy currently being built in Harpurhey spoke especially well on this point, and she should know.

And the second is a sense that the wind is, at long last, shifting in the city. For years Manchester has been in thrall to property developers. But the boom is busted, and what we do in the future will be less about building and more about retrofitting. As a wise audience member pointed out, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Now that the cranes have stopped their seemingly-endless march across the city, let’s turn our attention to what we already have: acres of solid old industrial buildings and solid old housing that no-one’s using. And some of the housing isn’t even that old – I’d love to know how many of those new build “city living” flats are empty?

But many people are discovering that highly-marketed dream of city living ain’t all it's cracked up to be. As one CC resident pointed out at the debate: “I can get as many cappucinos as I want but I can’t find an NHS dentist.” Ever noticed a playground in the city centre? I haven’t. (But don’t get me started on park and green space provision in Manchester; we compare shamefully with every other major city I’ve ever lived in or visited. When is this going to become a priority?)

If you want to depress yourself, consider the number of long-term vacant housing units in the city (recently at more than 6,000 according to the MEN) alongside the waiting list for social housing in Manchester (this article in The Mule puts it at 23,000 a year ago). Then factor in all the houses and flats on the market people can’t afford to buy. Something isn’t working.

Meanwhile, commercial rents in the city centre are skyrocketing, and you know who can’t afford to pay them? The artists, inventors, writers, thinkers and makers who give this city its reputation for being a hub of innovation. We can’t all go and work in the Sharp Project. If the city really wants to encourage a culture of innovation and experimentation, how about fitting out some of these abandoned or derelict buildings as artist live/work spaces (see Islington Mill), community cultural/voluntary centres (Zion Arts), or technology workshops, places like MadLab which provide resources and networks as well as much-needed physical space in which digital/creative folks to do their thing.

I’m hopeful that good things will start to happen in this area. We are lucky in Manchester to have a progressive city council that has supported many innovative programmes in the past; bold ideas that often don’t get as much recognition as they should. What we need is for the city leaders to make this a priority, to devote money (even a little bit) and time and energy to these projects, to develop incentives for people to re-use. Wrangling in court with landlords to take possession of a derelict building for the common good, for example, isn’t glamorous work, but its becoming increasingly important work.

While they’re at it, they should have a think about some of the ideas that were bandied about during and after the debate: Green rooftops and vertical gardens growing food – reducing CO2 and hunger at the same time. Citywide free wifi (though I get the impression MDDA have already established that dog won’t hunt.) Developing the unloved canal network for a range of uses. Making Manchester really bike and pedestrian-friendly. And if something’s working well in another city – the free bikes or city-sanctioned artist squats of Paris, say – let’s not be shy about stealing those ideas.

And yes, I know it’s not that simple. I sure as hell don’t have all the answers to all the tough questions like where is the money going to come from and what if people don’t want to live/work in these old buildings and how much can the council actually do? I guess I’m just hoping we can start to talk about these things in a new way. And that this is a conversation we can all participate in.

(Photograph: E.O. Hoppe, Manchester 1925)

Overlooked Manchester

"We are not architects, preservationists, activists, though we do know a number of each of these. We are not radicals, Situationists, academics or psychogeographers, though we are lucky to count a few of these mythical creatures as our friends..."
The newly-formed Manchester Modernist Society cannily introduces itself by telling us what it is not. So what is it? Well, the MMS manifesto makes for great reading, here's an excerpt:

"We believe that the recent past and its rich variety of grand and ordinary, cherished and neglected buildings continue to play a part in our shared consciousness and sense of identity ...We are keen to foster and help develop a greater public awareness of the rich and complex relationship between architecture, art and design and public space, and draw attention to the precarious nature of much of the 20th century backdrop that we often mistakenly take for granted.

We aim to create a real space for discussing, engaging and enjoying perhaps occasionally even campaigning for the multilayered complexities of a city that is comfortable to wear its carbuncled heart on its sleeve. Not for us the smooth uniformity of a relentlessly brand new city that is too intimidating to use."

Organisers Jack Hale and Maureen Ward have also enlisted the support of EP Niblock, who wrote the introduction to their website. The Society's first get together is a trip across the Pennines today in Leeds. But, closer to home, they also recommend this talk on The Future of Architecture tonight at The Circle Club. Look out for more events in future on their website or Facebook page.

There's more to a city than buildings, and Green Badge Guide Anne Beswick wrote to tell me about her new tour which focuses on some of quietest and possibly most neglected Mancunians - Manchester's trees. Loyal readers know I am a friend of the trees and wish there were more of them around here. Having grown up in a place that looks like this, I'm never really comfortable too far away from a forest. But it turns out I'm not far at all: The Red Rose Forest encompasses a big chunk of the parks, trees and woodlands in Greater Manchester. Who knew?

Anne says: "Did you know that alder makes the best charcoal for gunpowder manufacture, that birch trees are known as the 'ladies of the woods' or that the old name for oak was 'ac' from which we get acorn and Accrington?" More information and a schedule of the tree tour here on the Tour Manchester site. The next one is June 23.

Manchester arts venues dig social media

Increasingly, arts organisations and cultural institutions in Manchester are getting all mixed up with social media. It's not just about reaching younger and more tech-savvy audiences - though it will certainly help them do that - but taking part in the wider cultural conversation that is taking place in Manchester.

The Bolton Octagon has an excellent blog which provides behind-the-scenes peeks at their productions. Because I follow Bury Met on Twitter, I've been reminded about gigs I would have otherwise missed. The Library Theatre is on Twitter. So is Contact., Urbis and The Oldham Coliseum, which also uses a link sharing account on delicious to track coverage of their current production.

And that's just the heavy hitters. Really, one of the best things about social media is how it allows small underfunded collectives and artist groups to get the word out about their work without paying through the nose for PR. I've written about this phenomena in the Manc literature scene loads, but for a glimpse of similar things happening on the visual art side check out Exocet and Interval.

Sure, social media is another channel on which to promote your stuff, but savvy arts orgs understand that it's a tool that works both ways. It can also allow punters to participate in their work, from deciding what band should play a festival to getting involved in creating artistic content online. So the relationship becomes less one-sided and (hopefully) engenders a broader sense of ownership around these institutions.

Cornerhouse has embraced an interesting new "open source" approach which aims to engage the public more in programming, and abandon the traditional model of a head curator/programmer determining cultural output. The ensuing staff reshuffle which saw longtime film honcho Linda Pariser and Visual Art Director Kathy Rae Huffman depart caused a bit of a kerfuffle on the Manc arts scene.

Cornerhouse's new world order is laid out for your persual in The Art of With - an essay, seminar and a conversation that will potentially shape what the institution does in the future. The C-house commissioned We-Think author Charles Leadbeater to write an essay on how arts orgs can successfully incorporate this approach. And it's all just as collaborative as you'd expect: you can comment on the essay at the wiki here, and get involved in the seminar June 24.

And in July, Manchester Museums Consortium are launching a Wordpress-based online magazine to promote their activities and the city as a cultural destination. I'll be helping MMC involve the city's cultural bloggers in creating content for the site, so if you're doing reviews or criticism on your blog, drop me a line.

Manchester writing bits and bobs

A few interesting new developments in Manchester's blossoming online writing scene:

Nasty Safari is an online home for the best new prose, poetry, drama and non-fiction," they tell us. "It's a strange journey through the world that makes even the mundane exotic. And it may or may not involve zebras. Everyone involved in Nasty Safari lives, works and studies in Manchester, and we're really keen to get lots of submissions in from writers in the North West."

Willow Hewitt of Bewilderbliss has started Manchester Writing, "a new blog about readings and writing related things in Manchester. It's just getting going but I'm soon going to get a full diary of events on there of all (or possibly something between 'some' and 'most') of the readings around town."

Also just getting off the ground: web magazine An Apathetical Reader, "a creative community site that hopes to give a voice to the vast numbers of unsupported, disillusioned young people in the city," writes a shadowy figure called Alice Apathetical. "The website will feature local news, national political comment, features about Manchester, music journalism and artist profiles. By creating a unique and quality webzine I hope to support creative people blown by the current economic climate and finding the city a difficult place to meet like-minded people."

... "The magazine has strong links with The Chapel Social Centre on Platt Fields, where contributors can meet and discuss their ideas. It is also affiliated with People's Voice Media - the 'Reuters of the community' - which encourages and trains young people in visual media industries." To get involved, get in touch with Alice via the website.

WE ARE YOUNG AND WE ARE TRYING is "an art & literature zine with a cause. Each volume includes a piece of writing and a piece of art from ten different people and music and art from one more. Five are primarily writers, five are primarily artists. We hope to encourage creativity and trying new shit as well as providing a platform to show off the shit you do anyway."

There's news of a workshop linked to the upcoming Text Festival: Writers and artists 16 and up are invited to take part in a workshop series run by Bury Council. Participants will learn about Bury Art Gallery’s Text exhibition, have time to explore your creative ideas, work together to develop a script then help create a short digital animation which will go online for public viewing. Each workshop will be run by a range of artists for 2 hours each Saturday afternoon (2-4pm) for 6 weeks starting on the 16th May. For more information and a brief application form contact Farrell Renowden, Arts Development Officer at Bury council: artsdevelopment@bury.gov.uk or 0161 253 5804

I'm also nearly finished organising our first series of Rainy City Stories creative writing workshops. I'll post the details here soon.

A tale of two trees

Happy tree:



Tib Street at its most charming. Not the same without the old LSTD's outdoor tables, but still one of the loveliest spots in town.


Sad tree:



This tree died of embarassment after being forced to participate in the Triangle's horrifying mall sculpture atrocity. For shame.

Literary magazine madness

New literary magazines are springing up like mushrooms all over the Northwest (last week Mancubist tipped me off to two more I didn't know about.) But there are plenty of established mags still out there doing their thing, like ... uh, really big mushrooms. Sorry, it's early and I'm out of coffee.

Anyway, check this out: Succour Magazine will be hosting an evening of reading and drinks in Manchester to mark the launch of its eighth issue, 'Icons,' featuring new fiction and poetry from both established and unsung writers. It's at the Briton's Protection pub on November 28 at 8. Anyone welcome to attend or read. They're also calling for submissions for the next issue on the theme of Fantasies. More info here.

Swings and Roundabouts (creative saviours of the northwest) have a shiny new website where you can download all of the stuff from their first six issues. It's been on a bit of a hiatus for the last year, but is still very much alive and kicking and looking to publish new stuff.

Transmission no. 12 is out and looking good - I really enjoyed this issue, especially the profile of Joe Stretch and Chris Killen's piece on Richard Brautigan. Editor Graham Foster says the magazine will be making a pit stop for a while to rest on its laurels and ponder the future before it returns to us looking tanned, rested and ten years younger.

Rainy City Stories

I'm really delighted to announce the launch of a project that Chris (Mancubist) and I have been cooking up on the sly for some time now:

Rainy City Stories is a website that publishes new writing set in Manchester. It uses a Google map of the city to organise stories or poetry linked to particular places. Readers can click on a place marked by the little cloud icon to read a piece of writing associated with that spot.

Who can write for this site? Anybody can. We're open to all submissions of unpublished work. To get things rolling, we've commissioned pieces from four outstanding Mancunian writers: Jackie Kay, Mike Duff, Nicholas Royle and Rajeev Balasubramanyam. They're up now - go take a look.

But now we want YOU to send us your stories, poems or bits of memoir. If we like them, we'll put them on the map.

We've got big plans for the future, too.

We'll be publishing more commissioned writing in 2009, and expanding our site to include photography, graphics, and audio and video readings to accompany the words. A series of related writing workshops and a live literature event featuring some of the Rainy City Stories writers will be part of the 2009 Manchester Literature Festival. And we're investigating a fantastically exciting new possibility that would involve some of the best writing from the website, but we can't say much more about that yet.

Erm, what else should we tell you? The project is part of the Manchester Literature Festival's Freeplay programme, and it's funded by the good people of Arts Council England. Chris designed the site on Wordpress and is in charge of the techy stuff. I'll be doing the editing. No ferrets were harmed in the making of this website.

I'd love to hear what people think about the site so far - if you have some thoughts, leave a comment or email me at themanchizzle AT gmail DOT com.

Manchester spring festivals

Yep, it's spring, and you know what that means... the Manc festival frenzy is officially beginning and it won't end until late Autumn. Here's your tear-and-save guide:


Moves08
22-26 April
venues around Manc, and a bit in Lancaster too.

Moves celebrates movement on screen via a shitload of experimental short films, award-winning animation and enough talks n' workshops to keep all the flickheads and aspiring filmmakers in Manchester happy. The biggest event is probably the UK Premiere of the animated short film "I met the Walrus" which was nominated for an Oscar (pictured). But it's really all good. There should be some screenings outdoors, too, so if you walk by the big screen in Exchange Square and it's showing something more interesting than usual, that's probably what's going on. For a taster, check out these "ArtCast" podcasts that Folly has cooked up with Moves, featuring some of the best of the fest.


Futuresonic
1-5 May

This year the theme of our technogeek extravaganza is social networking. In fact, Futuresonic promise us "a city centre overrun with 'unplugged' social networking." So, that's a city full of people talking to each other in the flesh? Hmmm. Not sure about that one. Seriously, though, some of these art projects are kind of cool, conceptually at least. On the music side we've got hip hop with RZA of Wu Tang Clan, old art-punkers Wire, mind-bending electroweirdlet Luke Vibert aka Wagon Christ, and a whole bunch of artists of the electronic persuasion that I'm probably not hip enough to have heard of.


Sounds From the Other City
Sunday May 4
venues around Salford, the Brooklyn of Manchester

The fourth chapter of this one-day blowout sees local bands descend on Salford Rock City, playing churches, random places, and some freaky old man pubs you'd never otherwise enter. Having each venue booked by a different promoter ensures a really bewildering mix of stuff, and this year the venue count has grown to 8. I like the sound of Hey! Manchester's gigs at the Salford Arms, and the eclectic lineup in the arty environs of Salford Restoration Office. Oh, and local heroes Performance and Lonelady are playing at Egerton Arms. But, really, it's best to just pick a venue that sounds good, park there for a while, and then maybe stumble over to another one, and then another one, in an increasingly beer-fuddled haze. You'll see some good bands, you'll see some bad bands. That's how it goes.

Queer up North
9-25 May, venues around Manc

Yeah, remember that whole fiasco this winter in which the Arts Council almost axed Queer up North's funding? But it was saved by a heartswelling groundswell of support and general outcry from the good people of Manchester, who said it was essential to the city's cultural well being? Well now's the time to put your money where your mouth is and book some tickets. We have: the slightly scary Sandra Bernhard revisiting her superfamous one-woman show, Without You I'm Nothing. Marisa Carnesky and Ivo Dimchev bringing the performance art, Justin Bond of Kiki and Herb, the awesome Club Brenda, Lesbian Pulp Fiction, a Scottish jazz singer and a film about a zombie named Otto. And that's just a sample...

Flotsam and jetsam

A few bits and bobs:

The MIF fringe fest is coming back for more in Summer '09, and has started scouting around for acts and artists. Somewhat confusingly, its name has changed again. After being called Not Manchester International Festival and Not Part of Manchester International Festival it's now being called, simply, Not Part Of. Anyway, if you'd like to be involved, all the info is here: Not Part Of festival.

Maybe this is old news at this point, but I just heard about the rebranding of Wythenshawe. This was attempted with Ancoats/"New Islington" a year or so ago, and I think it's interesting that the folks involved in this project are openly stating that they're rebranding it. Is it just me who gets all squirmy when people talk about rebranding neighbourhoods, like they're deodorants or trainers rather than communities where people have been living quite happily for hundreds of years? Hmmm.

Krispy Kreme is about to hit Manchester like a spare tire. An outpost of this American donut chain is opening at Piccadilly Gardens next week. Have you seen these things? I renewed my acquaintance with them at the Trafford Centre drive-thru recently. They are fearsome. But tasty, dammit. Even if one of the sugarcoated devils contains enough saturated fat to keep a family of four alive for two weeks. Ah well, at least I'll now be able to get a a decent cup of brewed coffee in the city centre.
And don't give me that song and dance about Americanos being the same. They're not.

And, yes, I'm feeling much better now. Thank you to the many kind souls who sent in messages of solidarity during my long period of sickness and self-pity. I'm taking my massive 8-month-old bump to Ireland next week, so all will be quiet here on the blog.

New blogs: The moany edition

Oh my god. I have been feverishly ill now for two weeks, and being ill is apparently much worse than normal when you're super pregnant. For one thing, your immune system is not so effective. I have drunk gallons of vitamin C drink, inhaled more steam than a sauna attendant and ingested such radioactive levels of antibiotics that I can curdle pots of bio-live yoghurt with a single glance. And for all that I feel a little better, but not much. In fact, I have to go lie down for a bit.

That's better, not so dizzy now. Okay. (Cough.) Sigh. So I guess I have some new blogs to tell you about.

Last year Susie started a pregnancy blog called Oscar or Isabelle. And then she had her baby and it turned out to be neither an Oscar nor an Isabelle, but a Milo. So she's unveiled a new wordpressy blog in which she will record her adventures with the new man in her life: Travels with my Baby.

Lovely Gill Moore, Manchester photographer and graduate of one of our blogging workshops, has started an excellent blog that features photos she admires as well as her own work, news and thoughts about photography, exhibitions and other random things. Scatterdrum: Ramblings from inside a photographer's head.

Andy Sewina has started posting a work-in-progress-novel blog, called "Space Invaders!"

Tom writes Book of the Future, which deals in technology, society and geekery. "Been going since November 2006 and though I haven't managed to keep up my intended blogging schedule over that time I'm still approaching my 90th post," he says.

Ian Hough is the author of a book called Perry Boys about Manc football and culture in the 70s and 80s. He also writes a blog called The Nameless Thing, at which you can read about his theory of The Four Quadrants of Manchester.*

"The 4 quadrants are sectors, regions in Greater Manchester County, which possess definite identity and character, fault-lines in the ancient crust of our city. Just as Paris’ arrondissements are arrayed as a gigantic snailshell, in a tight clockwise spiral around the central core, so are Manchester’s degrees of suchness concentrically packed, like jam roly-poly about its lively heart..."

(*Unless you're from Partington, in which case you should not read it. It'll just make you angry.)

Finally, Manchester socialite Miss Coco LaVerne has arrived to pretty up our general area of the blogosphere. In her own words, Coco is "an enigma, a spectacular incarnation of beauty and grace." Welcome Coco. Now I'm going back to bed.

Rayner: Manchester restaurants "not quite"

"What is it with Manchester? Why, when it comes to restaurants, is it always so nearly, but not quite? Why does every restaurant I visit fail to deliver? Is it me? Do they hate me so much that they decide to show me such a mediocre time I won't return? Or is it the city? It's a big buzzy place, Manchester, full of interesting-looking people, and there are lots of Mancunians with money - exactly what you need for a thriving restaurant scene. And yet almost every time I eat here, I return home wallowing in disappointment, as though a little bit of me has died."

That's the lede of Jay Rayner's review of Grado, Paul Heathcote's new Spanish place on New York Street, in yesterday's Observer.

Rayner is one of the few national restaurant critics I have much time for. He's down to earth and clearly loves food, but never takes it too seriously. He seems like the kind of guy you wouldn't mind sitting down to eat with yourself, unlike most of the pretentious, self-worshipping windbags sharpening their steak knives on restaurants these days. And most of all, he's fun to read. ("It's all very well to source Iberico ham, but to then machine-cut it is an insult to the pig. To cut it thick and serve it fridge-cold is to jump on the pig's grave while howling at the moon.") I've always wondered why he doesn't review more Mancunian eateries, and I guess now I know why.

To be fair, Rayner goes on to praise my beloved Red Chilli to the skies. But his indictment of the city's dining scene is pretty damning. And in a way, I think he's got a point. Not neccessarily about Grado (I haven't been there yet, mostly because Heathcotes places are, in my experience, kinda boring) but about the standard of eating here.

I don't have a huge eating out budget; I love food and seek out good restaurants when I can. But in the five years I've lived here, I've found that lots of places the local press made much of (The Bridge, The Ox, Yang Sing, Obsidian) didn't live up to the hype, while others (Le Mont, Establishment) never appealed enough to try. I haven't been to the Michelin-starred Juniper yet, but am dutifully trotting over there before Paul Kitching leaves. Like most people, I'm happy to stick to my less-exalted favourites in the city: This n' That, Red Chilli, or the wonderful Market if I have some extra cash. Still, for a rock-solid special occasion meal, I'll usually be heading into the surrounding bits of Lancs and Yorks, which isn't what I would have expected before moving here.

Rayner speculates that Manchester's culinary shortcomings are down to the calibre of cooks in the city's kitchens, which could well be. For my part, I think too much time and money goes into creating a restaurant that looks flash, while less attention is paid to what comes out of the kitchen - and with an increasingly savvy dining public up here this tendency is starting to seem out of place.

Good news on Afflecks, Queer up North

So this week two much-loved Manc institutions got a reprieve. First we learned that Queer up North would not have their funding axed by the Arts Council, which is wonderful news for a festival that has made a genuine effort to re-invigorate its programme in the past few years.

All those people who signed the petition online and wrote letters and emails should feel pleased as punch, because the public outcry really did make a difference here. Looking at the other organisations saved from a funding cut, it seems the squeaky wheels got the grease. And remember that the best way to continue to show your support is by actually buying tickets to an event at this year's festival, which I hear is going to be especially good.

Then we got the good word that Afflecks Palace is safe. Honestly, I'm a bit skeptical about whether the threat to it was quite as acute as some local media outlets would have had us believe (the headlines shrieking "Afflecks Palace to Close!", for example). But getting reassurance that it's important to the city is definitely a good thing. A Manchester without Afflecks would be a Manchester with a slightly smaller and less colourful soul.

I just hope new owners Bruntwood understand the importance of allowing the place to stay just as it is: scruffy, quirky and vaguely disreputable - a splendidly ragtag emporium of treasures and tat. No Triangulation on Tib Street, please, or we'll have to kick you with our massive boots.

Queerupnorth faces Arts Council axe

A blogger involved with Manchester's gay and lesbian arts festival has written to say that queerupnorth are one of the couple hundred regularly-funded arts organisations in England who may lose a significant portion of their funding in the Arts Council's latest reorganisation. He writes:

"Arts Council England plans to end funding to queerupnorth from April 1st 2008. queerupnorth is the UK’s leading lesbian and gay arts festival, a Manchester institution, and the only organistion of its type in the UK with an local, national, and international reputation.

queerupnorth will be appealing this cancellation of funding; Arts Council’s Regional Board, chaired by Tom Bloxham, will meet on January 25th to consider the appeal.

queerupnorth is an important arts festival with a key role to play in portraying the LGBT community in a positive light and in challenging complacency, discimination and homophobia, which remain challenges to be faced in our society - all from a bona fide arts platform that enriches community life for all in the Manchester area."

Follow this link to find out more about the festival's campaign.

Whither Stevenson Square?

It seems Stevenson Square, that glum, heavily-trafficked bit of urban blight above Lever Street, is getting a makeover. I just stumbled upon this post on Rob Adlard's Blog from way back in December, possibly inspired by this piece in the MEN (in which they misspelled the name of the square. Classic). He writes:

"...the only real potential candidate for a proper square in the Northern Quarter, is to be developed by Argent, the people who brought a little bit of Milton Keynes to Manchester with the No.1 Piccadilly building.

As I’ve already said previously in this blog, they did a great job of encouraging the right kind of local businesses into the building, but its a real low point in terms of appeal and appearance showing that we haven’t really learned any lessons from the 70’s or the Arndale Centre. It really concerns me that the same people are going to be allowed to develop such an important part of our historic and unique Northern Quarter."

And, according to this press relase from architects HKR, it's to be called The Hive, no doubt to be filled with productive little worker bees hopped up on cappucino from the regulation coffee bar on the ground floor.

I didn't realise that Stevie Square was an official "conservation area" - This council site sketches out the planning guidelines, and includes a lot of great historical info. It seems the square once was exactly the kind of public gathering-place that Rob and others are calling for:

For the last three-quarters of the 19th century, the Square was popular with open-air speakers and became a meeting place and starting point for processions. The most notable of these celebrated the opening of the Town Hall in 1877 and was believed to have engaged 50,000 participants.

Rob says he'll keep us posted on the plans. This looks like one to keep your eye on. And what's with that Robot, anyway... what IS that thing? I like it.