When did Manchester truly start feeling like home?
I have spent the last few months asking people that deceptively simple question. I expected answers rooted in the grand narrative of the city. But nobody talked about economic strategies, transport policy or regeneration frameworks.
Instead, people talked about neighbours. A memorable first day at a new job. A favourite bus route, a football match, a particular song, or a bridge crossed every morning on the way to somewhere important.
That fierce, unapologetic sense of local pride makes perfect sense. Manchester has long been a place of identity, creativity and self-determination. I first encountered it with the glorious shock of arriving as an 11-year-old in my dad’s estate car, travelling from the post-industrial mill town of Blackburn towards a louder, grander future as we collected stock for our market stall.
Belonging begins with relationships
The conclusion I keep returning to in my work is simple: places alone do not create belonging. Relationships do. We find our footing through connections with people, shared memories, local stories and the landscape itself.
I decided to call this idea Mancunianity: Manchester understood through humanity, connection and the lives people build together.
This realisation sits at the heart of Mancunianity Flows, an Arts Council England-funded cultural project being developed with communities across Manchester and Salford, with support from Aviva Studios.
A city built upon flows
Mancunianity Flows explores how rivers, journeys, transport networks, music, memory and storytelling shape belonging.
The project began with a simple observation: Manchester became globally significant because it connected things. First there was the River Irwell. Then canals, railways and the Manchester Ship Canal. Today, culture continues that tradition. The cargo may have changed, but the instinct to connect remains.
Water flowed. Goods flowed. People flowed. Ideas flowed. Music flowed. Stories flowed.
The more I explored the history of Manchester and Salford, the more I realised that movement is not simply part of the city’s history. It is part of its identity. This became the basis of what I call the Theory of Flows.
The Theory of Flows suggests that places are not created by buildings alone. Places are shaped by the continuing movement of people, culture, memory, opportunity and relationships. Infrastructure provides the routes. People create the meaning.
The River Irwell did not simply carry water. Canals did not simply carry goods. Railways did not simply carry passengers. Each created new possibilities for connection. Each reshaped communities. Each altered how people understood themselves and the places they called home.
The Theory of Belonging
Another idea emerged from conversations with residents across Greater Manchester. People rarely described belonging as an identity. They described it as a relationship: with a neighbourhood, a river, a football club, a song, or the people who helped them become who they are.
This became the Theory of Belonging. Belonging is not a fixed state. It is something we continually create through our connections with places, communities and memories.
Together, the Theory of Flows and the Theory of Belonging form the philosophical foundation of Mancunianity Flows.
From audiences to contributors
The project combines walking, oral history, storytelling, music and participation to help people explore connections between their own lives and the wider story of Manchester and Salford. It sits at the meeting point of heritage, community arts, place-making, oral history and civic storytelling.
More importantly, it asks different questions.
Rather than asking only “What happened here?”, it asks “What does this place mean to you?”
Rather than treating people only as audiences, it invites people to become contributors. Rather than presenting history as something finished, it explores history as something still unfolding through our lives.
That small shift changes everything. People stop being passive recipients. They become participants, story holders, memory keepers and co-creators in a living civic narrative.
The Weavers
In Mancunianity Flows, these contributors are called Weavers. The name draws inspiration from Manchester’s industrial heritage, but it also reflects a deeper principle.
Individual threads are fragile. Together they form something remarkably strong.
The Weavers help gather stories, journeys, sounds, memories and reflections. With appropriate permission, selected work may contribute to future public resources and a developing archive of place shaped not only by official histories, but also by lived experience.
A web of connections
Ultimately, Mancunianity Flows is not only about rivers, railways or history. It is about connection.
The river is one thread. The railway is another. Music is another. Stories are another. The communities of Manchester and Salford add countless more. Together, these threads form a web that continues to grow.
In 1844, French observer Léon Faucher compared Manchester to a diligent spider at the centre of a vast web of connections. Nearly two centuries later, that image still resonates, not simply because Manchester was a city of industry, but because Manchester remains a city of connection, continually linking people, places, ideas and possibilities.
The more I do this work, the more convinced I become that culture is not simply something we consume. Culture can act as civic infrastructure: building trust, carrying memory, strengthening relationships and helping people understand where they belong and how they connect with one another.
The lives we have lived
The future challenges facing our towns and cities will not be solved by culture alone. But helping people understand relationships with place, history and community may be one of the most important foundations we can build.
Which brings me back to the question I started with: when did Manchester truly start feeling like home?
The answers continue to surprise me. Increasingly, I believe they point towards the same truth.
We do not fall in love with cities. We fall in love with the lives we have lived within them.
Perhaps the role of Mancunianity Flows is simply to help us recognise the threads that have been connecting us all along.