Field Worker Amanda Crummett, centre, with the Young at Heart Group and their art mentors

The Young at Heart Group – set up more than two years ago and ‘adopted’ by Keele University’s CALL-ME research programme – flung open the doors of their community rooms on Gortonvilla Walk this week to show off their creativity.

Matty Wade: "It's my design on the T-shirt!"

Each member displayed a finished print mounted and framed on the walls with other limited editions on sale to raise funds for future projects.

The silk screening techniques were taught by artist Ian McKay and his son Andrew as part of the M12-11 arts project, set up in 2005 of offer creative opportunities to east Manchester groups and residents.

“I’ve enjoyed every part of this project,” says Matty Wade, who accompanies his partially-sighted grandmother to the group and whose design features on the group’s T-shirts. “We all took a vote on which image should go on the shirts and the group chose mine. That made me very happy.”

Eighty-five year-old Maggie Wade was, at first, reluctant to join in the group’s activities: “When they came to ask me if I’d like to join I told them I could only see light and shape and I’d never to able to manage. We started with pottery and I thought I’d never to able to do it but, with the help of these people, I’ve managed. I felt as if I was past it at my age, so it just goes to show.

“They’re starting keep fit classes on Wednesday so I’ll come down to that too!”

“Some older people hardly go out at all,” says club secretary, Audrey Hurley. “So this group has given them a chance to have a cuppa and a chat as well as make some fantastic art. We all enjoy the laughs when we get together.”

“CALL-ME is part of a longer research project aimed at improving the quality of life for older people,” explains Keele University’s Professor Michael Murray. “With our partners, we’re providing opportunities for older people in disadvantaged areas of Manchester to socialise. Here the Young at Heart group have produced some amazing artwork but mainly it’s been about people coming together.

Our field worker, Amanda Crummett, has been able to support the group to apply for funding, recruit a community artist and develop this project. We’re really pleased with the results.”

[View with PicLens]

Photography workshop in the beautiful Clayton Vale. Photo: Len Grant

I was surprised anyone showed up at all. This was the big one: England versus Germany and it seemed every other house in east Manchester was sporting a massive St George’s flag or half a mile of bunting. Many had both.

But as our own kick-off arrived there were many eager snappers fingering their dials and knobs ready to capture the beauty of the Vale.

Billed as being totally non-technical, I firstly extolled the virtues of ‘looking at light’, imagining the sun as one massive photographic light that could be either on, off or many variations in between.

Getting a different viewpoint. Photo: Elliot Brown

The committed participants also heard my recommendation for ‘moving about’, looking for the best viewpoint and not being content with the view of a scene that first presents itself. It sounds incredibly basic but it is consistently overlooked and can make a good photograph even better.

I remember my photographic education – such as it was – took great leaps forward when my evening class teacher encouraged us to start taking pictures in a sequence rather than looking just for that killer shot. So my workshop participants were sent off to take a series of images, of any subject matter, that might be the beginning of ‘story-telling’, or at least thinking about they wanted to say with their photography before lifting the viewfinder to the eye.

Congratulation to all involved. It was a constructive afternoon for photography if not for English football. Here are some of the results.

[View with PicLens]

“Have you done all this Grandma?” Two year-old Sophie Ledward, admires the handiwork of GVA member, Rita Oakley.

Our ’Ouse is inspired by the exposed wallpaper revealed in the once private interiors of half-demolished houses scattered around east Manchester. “It was the condemned terraced houses of Beswick that first gave me the idea,” says the group’s lead artist, Ian McKay. “Those exposed living rooms and bedrooms signify the area’s transformation and I thought it would be good way to record people’s memories of the past.”

Each member of the group has chosen images, or drawn their own pictures of treasured childhood memories. Family pets, long-demolished cinemas, gas lamps, cups cakes, clogs and even the pit heads at Bradford Colliery have all been featured in this day-long exhibition.

The accompanying text by each of the artists, all Gorton residents, offers another strand of reminiscence. Noreen West recalls, “…clogs that mother had bought with the Divi she had saved from the Co-op. They were green, that’s my favourite colour, and they laced up at the front.”

Margaret Greenhalgh remembers her father, an engineer, taking the whole family to visit the pit in 1941. “He made sure his four girls were aware of Manchester’s vast, diverse industry: something to be proud of.”

Elsewhere Freda Wallwork writes about her inspiration for her ‘vanilla slice’ wallpaper: “I worked at Sharples Brothers as an apprentice confectioner in the 1950s… We had a small kitchen for our lunch breaks, very like the one in the underwear factory in Coronation Street. We were a very happy, but busy, group of friends.”

As part of this 13-week project the group were invited by the Whitworth Art Gallery to view their current wallpaper exhibition and were able to ask questions of the gallery curators. Back at their base at the Angels in Gorton the group set to work creating their individual designs using traditional woodcut printing processes.

Without pausing for breath Gorton Visual Arts is now working a mosaic about the Beyer Peacock railway engine works in Gorton. “The factory was at the bottom of our street,” recalls the group’s oldest member, “and every day I’d watch as thousands of men streamed into work. Until we started on this new project, I never had a clue what went on behind those high walls.”

Wallpaper exhibition at Whitworth Art Gallery

[View with PicLens]

In a previous life this aircraft hanger of a building stored microwaves, TVs, copies and printers for Sharp, the multi-national electronics corporation and one-time sponsor of Newton Heath’s most famous sons, Manchester United. Now it’s The Sharp Project, where shipping containers provide accommodation for fledging media companies and cavernous spaces lots of scope for TV drama sets.

Last week The Sharp Project on Thorp Road was ‘invaded’ by a graffiti-art group who, for three days, painted and spayed an immense mural across a warehouse wall that may once have been stacked high with video cassette recorders.

Agents of Change, a collective of artists who, like a disparate rock band, come together to produce spectacular artworks before dispersing across the world to do their own projects. One member of the group, Remi, has sandwiched Newton Heath into a travel itinerary that includes San Francisco, New York and Madrid.

Their last project together, ‘The Ghostvillage Project’ involved changing an abandoned concrete village, built for but never lived in by oil workers and their families in Scotland, into an innovative art gallery.

This current project was part of last week’s FutureEverything Festival.

See the Agents of Change website.
See the Sharp Project website.

The Ten Acre Lane Sports Complex: a homecoming for FC United

[View with PicLens]

Back in 1878, the year that football referees first started using whistles, the workers of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway would play their home matches on North Road, opposite the carriage and wagon works where the players toiled together during the day.

Their team – Newton Heath (L and YR) Football Club – played in a strip of gold and green and subsequently joined the newly-formed football league in 1892 and, a decade later, were renamed Manchester United.

The rest, you might say, is history and to continue the clichés, history does have a habit of repeating itself. So, only last month, FC United of Manchester, the anti-Glazer club set up in 2005, announced its intention to move back to its ancestral home in Newton Heath. Backed by Manchester City Council and New East Manchester the supporter-owned club plans to develop a rundown sports centre into a 5000-capacity stadium with community sports facilities alongside.

See FC United of Manchester’s website

"We're looking for a permanent home for the work now," says Yvonne

Although I photographed Yvonne preparing for this show a couple of months ago I wasn’t expecting the riot of colour and energy she has put into these large-scale murals.

The panels are full to bursting with weird and wonderful characters that begin life in her imagination. “Music is my inspiration,” says Yvonne, who joined GVA as the community art group were completing their Belle Vue mosaic. “I feel free when I’m drawing and listening to music. Anything from the 80s and the images just come to me.”

Yvonne’s original drawings were projected onto the wooden panels and then, assisted by artist, Andrew McKay, Yvonne has transformed them into larger-than-life characters.

Yvonne's neice Rebecca gets up close

It was great to see so many friends and family descend on the GVA’s studio last night to celebrate Yvonne’s achievement.

“We’re looking for a permanent venue for the work now,” she tells me, “somewhere it can be enjoyed for a long time.”

Clayton Hall: once home to the Byron family and the Chetham brothers

East Manchester continues to amaze me. The diversity of what goes on here and the commitment of local people is astonishing. This last week I found myself taking photographs in Clayton Hall, the 16th century ‘moated’ hall concealed in the middle of the unassuming Clayton Park. Each of four rooms are now decked out in the late Victorian style to give visitors a real taste of history in east Manchester’s most notable historic building.

Come and see the sunken cold store, dining room, kitchen and outside wash house

Yes, I’ve seen this sort of thing before in National Trust properties and in museums run by local councils. But here in Clayton – with the trams lines being re-laid outside on Ashton New Road – this piece of historical restoration has not been put on by a team of full-time curators but by local volunteers from the Friends of Clayton Park.

Over the last couple of years these dedicated volunteers have sympathetically renovated four previously empty rooms into what is now a cultural high spot and an invaluable learning resource for local schools.

Small grants have paid for some of the items – the kitchen range was bought from ebay – but others have been donated by friends and relatives and, since the displays have been open to the public, from visitors supportive of the Friends’ work.

Experience a Victorian kitchen: no fridge or microwave here!

The Grade 2 listed hall is open to the public every third Saturday of the month between 1–4pm (so that’s this Saturday, 20th March) and children are particularly welcome. There’s an ID quiz so youngsters can identify items in each room and plenty of hands-on activities from helping out in the kitchen to ‘ironing’ clothes in the wash house.

As a backdrop to the National Curriculum the Friends are keen to encourage more schools to book visits and use the hall as a teaching resource.

To contact the Friends email info@friendsofclaytonpark.org.uk or ring Manchester Leisure on 0161 231 3090.

The Friends of Clayton Park website

Here’s a slideshow of the fun. Click to get started and don’t forget to turn the volume up on your computer.

Commenting on the success of the day, head teacher, Lorna Rushton said, “We enjoy a multi-ethnic school community here at Ashbury Meadow and so it’s really important to understand each other’s cultures. The children, staff and parents really enjoy this annual celebration and we all get a lot out of it.”

Last night the celebrations culminated in a Festive Finalé at Gorton Monastery with music, stalls, speeches and refreshments for all. At dusk, children and adults alike lit a lantern and paraded to Gorton Park for a fire display and fireworks.

Don’t forget to turn the volume up on your computer.

Music : Cedar Mount High School; Gorton Voice Choir; Bloco Novo
Lantern Procession: Artistic team led by Fiona Smith and Tess Hills
www.curiouscargo.com
Fire Performers: Circus Diaspora
Fire Garden Installation: Walk the Plank

Pupils from Wright Robinson College show off their work inspired by Black Looks artist, Colin Yates. Their banner is displayed outside the Sportcity Visitor Centre on Ashton New Road.

Len Grant reports back from two exhibitions in east Manchester

Although it’s been on tour for ten years, this is the first appearance of the Black Looks exhibition in Manchester. And very welcome it is too. The 25 drawings, paintings and prints by artist Colin Yates, trace the contribution of Black and Asian professional footballers in Britain for more than a century.

Colin was motivated to produce his work whilst playing amateur football: ‘…I was witness to a series of racist incidents involving my Black and Asian teammates,’ says the exhibition introduction. ‘As a response to these verbal and physical attacks I decided to create an anti-racist football exhibition.’

Colin Yates' 'Black Looks' exhibition at Sportcity until the 26th

Colin accompanies the exhibition as it visits new cities, leading workshops with local schoolchildren as part of his continuing artistic response to racism in football. This week and last, he’s been motivating Wright Robinson High School students to create their own artwork based on the issues raised by the exhibition. Colin has worked with over 200 schools and community groups, educating through his art.

But what of the work? It’s powerful and full-on. Appropriately, Colin’s portrait of City’s Shaun Wright-Phillips kicks off the exhibition. It’s a beautifully-crafted copy of a photograph of W-P playing in a ‘friendly’ against Spain in Madrid. Behind him are Spanish fans, some on their feet, and you can almost see the verbal abuse hurled from the stand. The winger commented later, “That’s why I support the ‘Kick Racism out of Football’ campaign. It’s been going for 10 years but there is still a need for it, because you still hear the chants.”

Portrait of Shaun Wright-Phillips in Madrid

Colin’s exhibition also charts the rise of Black footballers in the British game. One piece, Black Explosion 1970-80, features 11 footballers including, Garth Crooks, Laurie Cunningham, Clyde Best MBE, Cyrille Regis MBE, and Viv Anderson MBE who, in 1979, was the very first Black footballer to play for England in a full international match.

Anderson’s achievement is further profiled in a poster-style piece with solid reads, blues, greens and yellows and the word LANDMARK below his portrait. Obama got a poster in the same style in the run-up to the presidential elections last year.

Other notable pieces works include a ‘neon’ Stan Collymore, a controversial figure who Colin says ‘joined the list of great footballing underachievers.’

The exhibition runs until Monday 26th October at the Sportcity Visitor Centre, Ashton New Road, near its junction with Alan Turing Way. Call 0161 227 3151 for opening times.

The second exhibition has sadly come and gone. Only staged for one day in the studio at The Angels Centre in Gorton, it was Peter Koudellas’ debut show. Twenty or so black and white prints were testament to Peter’s diverse artistic talent. As a member of the Gorton Visual Arts group, 52 year-old Peter, who has learning disabilities, has documented scenes from his travels around the country.

Peter's debut solo show at The Angels in Gorton

“He’s only been taking pictures for about 18 months,” explains his mother, Marie. “He takes photographs wherever he goes, he always has his camera with him.”

Peter is particularly keen on public art and has documented sculptures in Yorkshire, artwork at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the Eric Morecombe figure on the Flyde coast and, nearer to home, Colin Spofforth’s The Runner at the City of Manchester Stadium. Not to upset any footballing rivalries his exhibition also included the Best, Law and Charlton tribute at Old Trafford!

As part of the Gorton Visual Arts group, Peter has also contributed to the Belle Vue mosaic at Gorton Market and to the group’s many artistic endeavours. Artist Ian McKay, who inspires and co-ordinates the local amateur artists, says of Peter, “His application of paint is fantastic. He’s already where many professional painters would love to be.”