As Elaine, an artist in her 80s, stood at her window in north Manchester, she spotted new condominium blocks dominating the middle of the night skyline: “The moon is no longer in view; I have to crane my neck out of the window in order to see it. Or to see the reflection of the moon.”
I’ve been assembly with the Many Arms Craft Collective – a gaggle of older artists, knitters and poets – maximum Tuesdays for nearly a 12 months. The gang has been collecting on the group room in Victoria Sq., Manchester, for over a decade.
They have got been reflecting on Manchester’s large development increase as Victoria North – Britain’s greatest regeneration challenge – transforms their neighbourhood with 15,000 new properties. Town centre development may be reshaping skylines they’ve recognized for many years.
In combination, we’ve got created a movie monitoring how city regeneration transforms their global. The movie explores their dating with the weather via moving gentle, redirected wind and converting rain.
Individuals who have lived right here for many years – studying wind patterns, monitoring seasonal gentle, noticing atmospheric shifts – cling recollections that town planners can not see. Citizens’ observations additionally divulge how flora and fauna revel in city exchange – birds, bugs and nocturnal animals are all suffering from altered gentle and wind.
Development alters wind, blocks perspectives of the moon and stars, and adjustments the delicate stipulations citizens have discovered to learn over lifetimes. Observations from those artists display that heritage is not only about preserved structures or recorded rivers, however concerning the wisdom other folks lift.
As a film-maker and sound artist, I learn about the connections between other folks and the flora and fauna. In 2008, when Manchester Town Council rehoused my 82-year-old grandmother after she had lived in the similar area for 60 years, she wrote poetry to procedure her loss.
“Bodies, not walls, carry memories,” she wrote. Her phrases impressed The Flowering (2020), my first poetic documentary exploring city regeneration in the course of the recollections the frame holds. This influenced my analysis into how towns become.
Artists from the Many Arms Craft Collective meet weekly at Victoria Sq. in Manchester.
Fiona Brehony, Creator supplied (no reuse)
In Manchester, the River Irk flows via Victoria North. New riverside houses upward thrust whilst the river itself wishes care. For 2 centuries it powered turbines, used to be infected through dye works, then used to be ultimately culverted (channelled into underground pipes, hidden from view). But the river flows on, and so does the reminiscence it carries.
The artists at Many Arms lift intergenerational wisdom about how this city setting has modified. Our conversations about riverside houses blocking off daylight led the crowd to mirror on how development adjustments gentle in their very own streets. Perspectives of the moon disappeared, high-rise structures shifted wind and rain, and the sound of water tapping towards home windows stopped.
My PhD challenge analysed atmospheric transformations along the river itself: how those a lot of new structures and tendencies exchange properties in addition to waterways.
As weather exchange forces towns to evolve, observations accrued over a long time – how rain strikes via streets, how wind patterns shift, how rivers sound in a different way with the seasons – may tell climate-responsive city design. But regeneration regularly displaces the very individuals who lift this information earlier than it’s even recognised.
Fabrics and reminiscence
To retrace the Irk’s historical past, we labored with clay and herbal fabrics from the river – silt, stones, commercial brick fragments. An artist referred to as Dot recalled seeing blue pigeons from previous dye works, with feathers stained from chemical colors.
Because the clay stiffened because it dried, conversations became to how towns are constructed. Victorian brick from the Eighteen Nineties nonetheless stands forged, whilst new condominium exteriors are designed for 20-year lifespans.
Poetry emerged from the conversations: “Sand, soil, silt, leaves, clay, decaying plants, coal and dust, ash chemical waste” and “human hearts holding on to heritage, ours. Made of natural materials, hands, rain, wind, sunlight”. Other views recognise other folks and rivers as our bodies sporting reminiscence via exchange.
Artists created poetry and paintings that represented their interactions with their city atmosphere.
Fiona Brehony, Creator supplied (no reuse)
Sound and poetry
As a gaggle, we reconstructed waterwheels to discover how the Irk powered turbines. One artist, Jean, urged recording with hydrophones (particular microphones that paintings underwater) in kitchen sinks. Water via family pipes hooked up us immediately to the river, flowing via our fingertips. Enjoying hydrophone recordings for the primary time, Jean mentioned it seemed like being deaf – with out her listening to aids, it used to be like being underwater.
This published a a very powerful perception: listening is formed through our our bodies. Jean’s deafness intended she heard the river in a different way, noticing frequencies and vibrations others may leave out. Kitchen sink hydrophones create get entry to the place it didn’t exist, bringing culverted, fenced or far-off rivers into properties via soundwaves in home pipes.
Those conversations developed into Two Worlds, a valid set up created with composer and sound artist Simon Knighton. This piece of sound design informs the movie ranking and explores how other folks coexist with the surroundings. The Irk pulsates other rhythms relying on the place you concentrate. Harsh city concrete or gentler upstream flows are heard in a different way through each and every set of ears.
As we wrote poetry in combination after discussing how some long-forgotten waterways were buried underneath streets, Rose requested: “What happens to a river when it becomes a road?”
Modifying poetry and screen-printing phrases on material used to be a part of the collaborative procedure.
Fiona Brehony, CC BY-NC-ND
Rose’s query lies on the middle of my analysis: when towns broaden, what environmental wisdom disappears?
Manchester has misplaced more than one rivers to culverting, building and roads. Older citizens lift wisdom more youthful generations by no means knew existed. As weather exchange calls for us to show or “daylight” culverted rivers for flood control, those recollections may information recovery.
Many Arms’ Subject matter River, a choice of motion pictures and poetry published onto material, is on show throughout the River Tales exhibition till March 23 2026 in Manchester Histories Hub at Manchester Central Library.
