The Classic Weekender.

From the literary works of the 60s to one of the era’s most celebrated snappers, from digital art to political history, from the Industrial Revolution to British grub, and from landscape art to new music and cinema, this is your guide to the long weekend in Manchester

OUR PICKS FOR FRI 1 OCTOBER

Your weekend begins with Manchester Reads the 60s (6.30pm-8pm, £3/£2), an evening of passionate literary debate scheduled to celebrate Penguin’s 75^th birthday. Join Tony Lacey (Editorial Director of Penguin) and 60s book champions including novelist Margaret Drabble for a lively discussion on which books best represent the 60s. Given that this was a decade that produced such classics as A Clockwork Orange, it’s fitting that tonight’s event takes place in the newly opened International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Afterwards, head back into the 21^st Century with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Manchester Art Gallery (until 30 Jan, free). Recorders is the Mexican-Canadian’s new exhibition, an artist perhaps best known for Vectorial Elevation, an installation at the 2010 Winter Olympics whose searchlights punctured the Vancouver night sky. The Manchester exhibition is no less dramatic, and includes the world premiere of People on People, a co-commission with the AND Festival, and four specially adapted interactive artworks that have never been shown in England before, including Pulse Room, the artist’s contribution to the Mexican Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2007. To mark the Weekender, Manchester Art Gallery opens its doors until late, allowing you a chance to enjoy this exhibition after hours (6.30pm-9pm, free). Live music from Marconi Union alongside what’s being billed as ‘interactive activity’ from Lewis Sykes, plus a bar in the glass-roofed atrium of this beautiful, Grade I listed building, all add up to an evening to remember. From here, you can head into nearby Chinatown for a bite to eat – the Little Yang Sing is reliably good. If, however, digital art doesn’t appeal, we’d recommend the People’s History Museum. Recently restored (to the tune of £12.5m), this national museum is the only one of its kind in the country and charts the 200-year tale of British democracy. On Friday, the Museum hosts Pedal Power, a pacy, poignant production from the Mikron Theatre Company that promises to ‘freewheel through cycling history with the wind at its back’ (7.30pm-9.30pm, £10/£8). Manchester is the birthplace of the Clarion Cycling Club, an organisation that fused sport and socialist politics. This performance looks back at the 100-year history of socialist cycling in a performance set during the last day of business in a 21^st Century cycle shop. Afterwards, head into nearby Spinningfields for dinner, or across the river to The Mark Addy, a gastropub owned by award-winning chef Robert Owen Brown. Click here for full event listings and booking information

OUR PICKS FOR SAT 2 OCTOBER (DAY)

We’d recommend you start your day on Oxford Road, in the park-side setting of The Whitworth Art Gallery. This Gallery, whose textile and wallpaper collections are second only to the V&A, is testament to Manchester’s industrial past – it was part of a bequest to the city by Victorian philanthropist Sir Joseph Whitworth and, today, continues its founding aim of being a ‘source of perpetual gratification to the people of Manchester’. Its landscape exhibition The Land Between Us (until 23 Jan, free) includes 50 of the Whitworth’s own JMW Turner watercolours, as well as works by the likes of William Holman Hunt and Samuel Palmer. Alongside, you’ll find contemporary pieces by artists such as Rachel Whiteread and Larissa Sansour, united in a show that interrogates the idea of the British landscape and identity. Just down the road, and part of the Alfred Waterhouse-designed university campus (Waterhouse was also responsible for the neo-Gothic Town Hall), you’ll find The Manchester Museum. One of the UK’s leading university museums and with over three million objects in its stores, this autumn it hosts China: Journey to the East (until 26 Jun, free), a British Museum show that covers 3,000 years of Chinese history and culture. While you’re there, don’t miss Finding Manchester, Lost in Bolivia (until 30 Jan, free), a photographic exhibition where Liz Peel and Chris Smith document their journey to Manchester – not the Manchester we know and love, however, but its namesake village nestled deep in the Bolivian jungle. And if that’s not enough, just outside is the Reflective Room (1pm-4pm, free), a temporary ‘room’ designed by Manchester School of Architecture students that allows a few moments of quiet contemplation in an otherwise busy day – with the designers on hand to answer questions and get you involved in activities. Need refreshment? Try the Museum’s own café or head across the road to Kro Bar, an independent pub that serves up cask ales and Danish-inspired grub inside the Grade II listed former Temperance Society building. Click here for full event listings and booking information

OUR PICKS FOR SAT 2 OCTOBER (EVE)

Manchester is well known for its nightlife, but we thought we’d give you an altogether different evening experience this weekend. Your first option is to head to Cornerhouse and its sterling second-floor café-bar (great for people watching and, if you get there early enough you’ll also be able to see some of the exhibitions that make up Abandon Normal Devices (AND), a city-wide festival of digital culture and new cinema – galleries open until 8pm). Food and art sorted, walk down to the cinema for the world premiere of Self Made, a feature-length film co-written by Turner Prize winning artist Gillian Wearing and playwright Leo Butler (6pm & 8pm, £7.50/£5.50 screening only, £10.50/£8.50 screening and Q&A). Based on an idea by Wearing, the film follows 12 participants as they embark on a method-acting workshop. Filmed in Newcastle, the action begins as job adverts are placed that ask members of the public, ‘If you were to play a part in a film, would you be yourself or a fictional character?’ The film follows what happens next, as those who reply are cast and then, ultimately, appear in the final film. Your second option is to see Manchester as few ever do – by water. Despite being home to three rivers (the Irk, the Irwell and the Medlock), post-industrial Manchester has long turned its back on its waterways. Tonight, Manchester by Boat takes you along the Irwell towards the Manchester Ship Canal, built during the ‘Cottonopolis’ era and in its day the largest navigation canal in the world. But this is more than a mere river cruise – you’ll also be served a three-course meal from one of the Northwest’s top chefs, Robert Owen Brown (whose traditional British dishes Observer critic Jay Rayner described as ‘an old-fashioned treat’), alongside a personalized commentary from our on-board tour guide that sheds light on the waterside sights en route to Salford Quays – from industrial heritage and one of the UK’s top ten buildings (Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North) to the newly opened Media City, a 21^st Century digital media enclave now home to the BBC (6.30pm-9.00pm, £40). Click here for full event listings and booking information

OUR PICKS FOR SUN 3 OCTOBER

If you haven’t yet made it down to the People’s History Museum and Spinningfields, this is where we’d recommend you start your final day. Spinningfields is a new riverside part of Manchester sandwiched between the Museum and Castlefield, the latter an outdoor ‘urban heritage park’ home to the Bridgewater and Rochdale canals and the world’s oldest passenger railway (now part of MOSI, the Museum of Science & Industry). Both canals and railway once made Castlefield a hub of industrial commerce, although walking along its peaceful paths today you’d never guess. Both Spinningfields and Castlefield boast a clutch of solid eateries (such as Dukes 92, the Museum’s own Left Bank Café and The Mark Addy), all of which are good bets for Sunday brunch. The People’s History Museum is showing Carried Away (until 10 Oct, free), a photographic exhibition that takes a sideways look at protest over the past 100 years: in it, you’ll see images of protestors such as Suffragette Dora Marsden being carted off by the authorities. Close by, another female pioneer is celebrated at the John Rylands Library: the Manchester novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell. Timed to mark the bicentenary of her birth, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Connected Life draws on the library’s collection to present personal letters, photos and possessions that tell the story of a woman whose social networks and writing illuminated the murky lives of the Industrial Revolution-era working classes (until 28 Nov, free). The Library itself is a fabulous neo-Gothic confection that speaks volumes about Manchester’s industrial past – historian Ed Glinert described it as ‘one of the world’s great libraries’ – and it is one of the city’s key landmarks.

Spend the afternoon in Salford Quays, arriving in time for two musical performances at another landmark: Imperial War Museum North. First up is What a Performance: The Beating Wing Orchestra (12pm-1pm, free). This Manchester-based band was first brought together for the Manchester International Festival in 2007; its unique refugee membership (drawn from countries such as Kurdistan, Cameroon, Bangladesh and Brazil) coupled with collaborations with international artists, make it one of the most exciting groups working in the UK. Here, the band play live in a performance that promises to be both intimate and public, as music floods the foyer. Later, catch another one-off performance, this time from Neil Yates, one of the UK’s most distinctive, original voices on the trumpet: Tarnished Silver – Sketches of a Northern Town (4pm-4.30pm, free). In between performances, stroll across the bridge that spans the Manchester Ship Canal and look around The Lowry. This millennial multi-arts centre takes its name from the Salford painter LS Lowry – it holds the world’s largest collection of his work. It also hosts a photographic exhibition by swinging 60s snapper Philip Townsend, the man who captured on film the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles (until 7 Nov, free). In a special event for the Weekender, The Lowry stages an intimate ‘in conversation’ session with Word Magazine editor Mark Ellen and Philip Townsend himself – your chance to meet the man behind some of the most iconic images of the 60s (2pm-2.30pm, £5).

Click here for full event listings and booking information, download the Classic Weekender mini guide or return to the Weekender home page

Images (top to bottom): Pedal Power, Mikron Theatre Company, courtesy People’s History Museum; Close-up Shadow Box, 2006, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer; People’s History Museum, copyright Kippa Matthews; Earthenware roof tile in the form of Guan Yu riding his horse. Made in north China, between 1490 and 1620. © The Trustees of the British Museum; Lake Lucerne, 1887, JMW Turner, courtesy The Whitworth Art Gallery; The Mark Addy; Lian Stewart in Self Made, 2010, Gillian Wearing, photo Mark Chapman; Carried Away, 40 Hours Movement Strike 1919, courtesy People’s History Museum; Imperial War Museum North; Mick Jagger, 1966, copyright Philip Townsend.

No related posts.