I love a parade

All this buildup to Jeremy Deller's Procession (which looks to be amazing) has renewed my appreciation for the humble parade. And sent me searching for a half-remembered Maurice Sendak (?) book I had when I was little about a parade featuring all kinds of unusual groups of people - people with moustaches and/or people who slurped soup, among others? Anyway, I can't remember what it's called, so if it rings a bell for anyone let me know because I'm going crazy here. Maybe I should ask Jeremy Deller.

And if you'd like to whet your appetite for Procession by checking out another unconventional parade, head over to Hebden Bridge Saturday at 2pm for the Handmade Parade. As you'd expect from a town "internationally known for its funkiness" and indeed for the seriousness with which it takes its role as right-on capital of Albion, this is a parade with rules: No written words or logos, and no motorised vehicles.

They are good rules, though, so we can't poke too much fun at them, and the parade sounds terrific, with puppets (which look a lot like the ones at my beloved Bread and Puppet in VT), dancers, handcrafted floats and a samba band. There are workshops if you'd like to make something yourself and march in the parade, which is followed by a pageant and a big picnic in Calder Holmes park. This year's events have a Glorious Garden Party theme, so expect to see lots of adorable wee trustafarians cavorting in handmade butterfly costumes.

The Cutting Room Experiment

There's an empty square in Ancoats next to St. Peter's Church called Cutting Room Square. It's a new public square created as part of the regeneration of the area. It's pretty quiet up there these days. But that's all going to change on June 20 when the Cutting Room Experiment takes over.

What's it all about? Well, nobody knows yet. The organisers are soliciting ideas for events across 12 different streams of programming, including literature, architecture/design, art and pop music. The way it works is that people submit their ideas for what they think should happen, and the winners of open online voting decide what actually gets to happen. It's a little similar to the way the Mapping Creativity project worked, but with a different focus and on a different scale.

Current contenders include some unsurprisingly flashmobby suggestions, like the biggest Space Hopper race ever, an enormous silent disco and a mass dance routine to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The literature stream makes for particularly interesting reading with some strong, writing-led ideas alongside some stranger ones (Jane Austen and zombies???) Votes close on Friday, May 29.

The resulting events will be funded by regeneration bodies, the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and New East Manchester.

Got questions? Want to know more? Well, you're in luck. Organiser Jon is inviting curious bloggers down to the Bay Horse on Thursday May 21 at 6:30 for what may be Manchester's first ever "blog launch," constituting a chat about the event and a free pint.

Weekend: New Islington, Mayflies

Remember last year's New Islington festival? Uh... I remember that there was one... something about a spurting man and a barge? This year its being billed as The Urban Folk Festival for Urban Folk. Urban as in Urban Splash, developers of that rebranded bit of Ancoats, geddit? Anyway, it's 2-8 pm around Old Mill Street, and it's free.

And the music is by (drumroll please) D.percussion, making a "secret return" after saying this year's fest was the last. Not sure this is a real selling point in Manc these days. The list of performers, spread over three stages, doesn't ring a lot of bells for me. Psychedelic outfit the Beep Seals, Magic Arm and a bunch of other local bands and DJs. Contrary to what the "urban folk festival" tagline leads you to expect, there are only a tiny handful of folk performers including Mancunian folkstress Kathryn Edwards. Would've been nice if they actually had given us an urban folk festival, instead of the usual teeth-grinding mix of Manc djs spinning the usual thumpy whatever. Basically, it's going to be D.Percussion with fairy cakes.

Fortunately, there's the indie-tastic Manchester Book Market, where you can meet some of those hardworking literary magazine editors and small press folks. There's readings from Anthony Joseph, Lemn Sissay (though he was a no-show last year) the brilliant flash-fiction writer David Gaffney, Tony Walsh, John Siddique, and a mess of poets and writers you may not necessarily have heard of before but you never know one or two of them might be pretty decent, all compered by Chloe Poems. There's also a series of specially commissioned shorts from local filmmakers.

There's also some twee activities involving vintage cakes, wellies and eek, pedalos on the canal. Yeah, that canal in the picture above. A lot of it sounds harmlessly annoying along the lines of Mr. Scruff's sodding tea tent. But then there's the nu rave sheep pen. "Graffiti artists will spray designs on live sheep while listening in the best in nu-rave club sounds." Oh sweet Jesus, that's wrong in eleven different ways at once.

At the same time, across town in Cornerhouse, Mayflies flits into town to bring us a day of arty hijinks. Between 11 and 5:30, artist BBB Johannes Deimling will perform Don't Hurt Me in the public spaces of the Cornerhouse building. His works often "provoke unconscious fears using an undercurrent of bizarre humour." Scary and funny? Sounds good. Up in the gallery they'll be screening Kleinodtotsod, a video work by John Bock that hints at the malevolent nature of domestic space. Then at 6 there's a screening of the Mayflies film programme, with works by George Barber, Deborah Bower, Wojciech Bruszewski, Michelle Handelman and Ben Rivers. (entry to the films is £3 and includes a drink, booking reccomended.)

Oh, and you can't get in if you've been within ten feet of the nu-rave sheep pen. They'll be checking.

Burnt to the Ground report

Burnt to the Ground was a lovely afternoon out, very chilled and pleasant. I heard a few people saying how much it was like D.Percussion used to be, before it was overrun with menacing scallies and scarily wasted people. Plus when you paid your donation you got a nifty orange sticker that said "Are you the God of Hell Fire?", which I loved.

The few bands I saw were good, though the DJ area (with one bloke doggedly dancing solo) was too close to the main stage, Stevie Square not being all that big really, and if you hung out in the middle your ears were hurt by clashing-music-din. And watching the skateboarders take turns on the ramp trucked in by SkateMCR was strangely mesmerising.

There were older people, younger people, and even plenty of kids there. Loads of kids, in fact. In the middle of Broke n'£nglish's set of full-on Manc rap there was a tiny little boy sitting on the ground in the middle of the bouncing crowd filling a notebook with painstaking drawings of superheroes and video game characters. It was the kind of place where that could happen, and it would be okay. Though after talking to my friend Hazel, I'm half-convinced that the only reason some people bring their kids to these things is so they can smuggle in contraband beer in the stroller (apparently they never check 'em.)

Sadly, I missed out on Arthur Brown's performance, because I was eating what I now firmly believe to be the best dim sum in Manchester over at Pacific. But yes, he did bring his awesome flaming helmet. Wish I'd seen it! The above picture comes from laptoppingpong. Spinneyhead has loads up too.