Aviva Studios, home of Factory International
Our first workshop at Aviva Studios
Mancunianity is a word coined for this project to express the spirit, creativity, warmth and community found across Greater Manchester’s many people and places.
Now the word is beginning to come alive.
Our new team of Weavers met for the first of ten creative workshops leading towards the intergenerational Mancunianity Flows walks beside the River Irwell.
The Weavers arrived with different lives, experiences, questions and connections with Manchester and Salford. From the beginning, the room filled with lively conversation, laughter, thoughtful questions and new ideas.
People listened carefully, found unexpected connections and began shaping how the project could grow. It was an exciting, generous and wonderfully productive first meeting.
The Weavers are not simply being asked to remember the past. They will help choose the stories, question the history, explore the river, test the route and influence the music, sounds and experiences audiences encounter.
Over the next nine workshops, researched history will meet lived experience. Memories will meet music. Different views of the same river will be welcomed rather than smoothed into one official story.
There will be space to speak, create, question, disagree or listen quietly. Every Weaver can contribute in a way that feels right for them.
The people have met.
The ideas are moving.
Mancunianity has started to flow.
More discoveries from the workshops and the River Irwell will be shared as the project develops.