Salford Everywhere: A City Gathering at Peel Park
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Salford Everywhere: A City Gathering
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Thought Ai Weiwei’s Button Up! was big? Greater Manchester’s largest artwork of 2026 might still be to come.
Builders, pigeon fanciers, NHS workers, food bank teams and Royal Mail staff – all feature in Salford Everywhere, a new film by award-winning visual artist and filmmaker Matthew Rosier. Over the past year, at locations as varied as Grand Palais Swinton, Media City and Salford Lads & Girls Club, Rosier and producers From The Other have filmed 1553 Salfordians from more than 150 community groups. The occasion is the city’s 100th birthday; the gift is a portrait of the city as embodied by the people who live and work there.
Where does “big” come into it? Rosier, who trained in architecture, makes films to be projected back onto the places they were shot. Last year in Berwick-upon-Tweed, he filmed around 800 residents – nearly a tenth of the town – and projected them at 10 times life size onto the walls of its Hawksmoor barracks. Salford Everywhere almost doubles that cast, and spreads across two buildings.
The main action happens on 9 and 10 October: a free mass gathering in Peel Park to watch the film as a community. Twice each night, Rosier’s 45-minute film will be projected at monumental scale on the University of Salford’s Maxwell Building. Accompanying it, you’ll hear a live score of local choirs and brass bands under the music direction of Salford-based composer and DJ AFRODEUTSCHE. What starts as a film project becomes a kind of audiovisual portrait.
“I’ve always loved working with the people of Salford,” says Rosier. “This city has such a strong social identity and history, from the first publicly funded park, Peel Park, where our project culminates, to the social clubs, where groups and teams from across the city participated in the film. Having spent a month editing the footage of over 1500 Salfordians, what comes through is the humour, togetherness and toughness of this place.”
Meanwhile in Pendleton, all 1553 contributors will be projected silently across the iconic Salford Shopping City tower, from 7pm until 10pm each night. While the projections on the Maxwell Building reach 20m, here they tower up to 75m. Ai Weiwei, eat your heart out.
