Manchester
2018 - 2019

At the heart of the city, Manchester’s Grade 1 listed Town Hall is a much-loved landmark, where we gather at important times to honour and celebrate, to welcome visitors and to do business. It’s where we host civic guests, international delegations, Mancunian weddings and special events. But – having opened in 1877– the building is showing its age. The Our Town Hall Project is a major update to the Town Hall, protecting this architectural masterpiece and improving it for the city and the nation, before re-opening in 2024. Working with several of Manchester’s key cultural organisations, Curated Place developed and delivered a series of workshops, exhibitions, events and community outreach projects.

As part Our Town Hall, Curated Place worked with local communities across the 32 wards of Manchester and the city’s key cultural organisations, to activate the renovation activity, archives, heritage and stories of the Town Hall through artistic interventions and residencies - giving a voice to both prominent and overlooked people in the city. The project was supported by Manchester City Council, Age-Friendly Manchester, ManchesterLibraries Group, Disabled Artists Networking Community, ArtsCouncil England and the storytellers of Manchester.

TOWN HALL TALES

Town Hall Tales is a project that explores the rich personal histories of the people of Manchester and brings their stories to the public with photographic exhibitions that took place in the different wards of Manchester. These exhibitions celebrated the people of Manchester and their relationship with the iconic Town Hall. Artists Afshan D’souza-Lodhi and Layla Sailor were tasked to uncover unique memories and anecdotes, presented through interviews, writing and a series of photographs, all with a story to tell - from masquerade balls to a surprise appearance from the Queen, and everything in between..

Both artists spent a number of days with participants recording interviews, documenting their stories then working with them to shoot self-led portrait images to represent their tales. These images were then superimposed on elements of the Town Hall’s architecture printed at scale and exhibited in Manchester Central Library.

Our Town Hall

MAVIS DEAN

SAKAS MAM

USHIKU CRISAFULLI

JOHN HAMILTON

JOHN CANNING

LINDA SKIPPER

JULIE FRANKLIN

COLETTE JONES

DECLAN MAGUIRE

The Artists

Our Town Hall

Afshan D’souza-Lodhi

Interviews & Text

Layla Sailor

Photography

MANCHESTER MAIL PROJECT

Manchester, the world’s first industrial city, was a place of radical ideas that encompassed politics and protest – Manchester Mail connects with a diverse group of young people from different communities across the city to respond to the Town Hall archives of what the city was built upon and create an artistic discourse through the Mail Art method with their peers in Europe.

We worked with Manchester Youth Groups and the public, running a series of protest art workshops delivered by specialist national and international artists. Through the Manchester Mail project our participants created a body of work for exhibition online and at the MMU Special Collections, whilst connecting them with their international peers with the support of Manchester City of Literature and Manchester Histories. Our workshop activity engaged with participants from Whitworth Young Contemporaries, Melland High School and Viften - Combined Youth Activity Programme (Æro, Denmark), and Festival of Manchester 2019.