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Culture of Manchester

The Culture of Manchester boasts diverse artistic, architectural, musical, sporting, theatrical and creative breadth, comparable to any significant international metropolis.

20th century broadcaster and social commentator Brian Redhead once said "Manchester... is the capital, in every sense, of the North West of England, where the modern world was born. The people know their geography is without equal. Their history is their response to it". Ian Brown said "Manchester has everything except a beach".

Often cited as the world's first industrialised city, with little pre-factory history to speak of, Manchester is a frequently visited city in the United Kingdom and a major centre of the creative industries.

Nightlife

There has long been a thriving nightclub culture in Manchester. Broadcaster Jimmy Savile is credited as becoming the first modern DJ by using twin turntables for continuous play after he obtained two domestic record decks welded together. He first used this device to play to the public in 1946, at a nightclub called The Ritz on Whitworth Street (which had opened in 1927). Tony Prince is credited as becoming the world's first full-time club DJ in 1964 when Savile, who was then a Mecca manager in Manchester, told him that Top Rank considered him to be the first person to be on their payroll as a pure DJ.

Many teenagers of the 1960s developed a love for Northern Soul, which had as two of its epicentres the Wigan Casino and Manchester's Twisted Wheel Club, and is credited as being instrumental in the development of the Motown Sound.

Rob Gretton, members of New Order (the band formed from the remaining members of Joy Division after singer Ian Curtis' suicide) and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson opened Fac 51 The Hacienda on Whitworth Street in 1982. It quickly became the focus of electronic music and the start of house music, the Madchester sound, and the Ibiza scene, which all came together in the Summer of Love in 1988. The Hacienda was also at the setting of the 2002 movie 24 Hour Party People.

One of the oldest and most diverse venues is the Band on the Wall, a live music venue in the Northern Quarter area of the city. This venue was built around 1862 as the flagship pub of a local brewery; it was originally called The George & Dragon. It got its nickname in the late 1920s or early 1930s from the stage high on the back wall. In 1975 it was taken on by jazz musician Steve Morris and his business partner Frank Cusick, and renamed The Band on the Wall.

Art

There are several art galleries in Manchester, notably:

Chris Ofili and L. S. Lowry are two internationally acclaimed painters from Manchester.

Museums

Museums in Manchester include:

Greater Manchester Police Museum
Manchester Jewish Museum
Manchester Museum
Museum of Science and Industry, an Achor Point
of ERIH (European Route of Industrial Heritage)

Pankhurst Centre
People’s History Museum
Urbis, a museum of city life
Gallery of Costume

Music

Classical

Manchester is home to two symphony orchestras, the Hallé Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. There is also a chamber orchestra, the Manchester Camerata.

For many years the city’s main classical venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street. Since 1996, however, Manchester has had a modern 2,500 seat concert venue called the Bridgewater Hall, which is also home to the Hallé Orchestra. The hall is one of the country’s most technically advanced classical music and lecture venues, with an acoustically designed interior and suspended foundations for an optimum sound. Other venues for classical concerts include the RNCM, the Royal Exchange Theatre and Manchester Cathedral.

Manchester is a centre for musical education, being home to the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music.

In the 1950s the city was home to the so-called ‘Manchester School’ of classical composers, which comprised Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr.

Pop

For Mancunians, the pop musical heritage of the city has been a source of great pride. The city’s eclectic mix of music has helped to create the sense among its inhabitants that Manchester is the most important city in world music.

For local groups and bands from Manchester, see List of bands from Manchester.

Bands who contributed to the "Madchester" music scene include:

The Chemical Brothers (from southern England) formed in Manchester. Also, ex-Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown has forged a successful solo career, as has ex-Smiths leadman Morrissey. Among the others born in the Greater Manchester area are Richard Ashcroft and Jay Kay-the singer and mastermind of the acid jazz band Jamiroquai.

In 1965, on the U.S. Hot 100, a unique hat-trick of consecutive number 1s took place in the spring, all from Mancunian pop groups. Freddie and the Dreamers spent two weeks at the top with "I'm Telling You Now" (between April 10–24), Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders one week with "Game of Love" (April 24-May 1), and finally Herman's Hermits with "Mrs Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter", a further three weeks (May 1–22), a total of six weeks, an achievement never matched even in the UK Top 50.

Manchester’s main pop music venue is the Manchester Evening News Arena, situated next to Manchester Victoria railway station. It seats over 21,000 and is the largest indoor arena in Europe. In 2001, the arena was voted International Arena of the Year. Other major venues include the Manchester Apollo and the Manchester Academy. The many smaller venues throughout the city, such as the Bierkeller, the Roadhouse and Night and Day Cafe, ensure that Manchester’s music scene is always vibrant and interesting.

The famous American anti-war hippie musical from the late sixties, Hair, includes a song entitled "Manchester, England" though the mention of the city in the song's title is somewhat irrelevant and merely used as punctuation in the song's lyrics.

Literature

In the 19th century, Manchester figured in novels that discussed the changes that industrialisation had brought to Britain. These included works such as:-

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell,
The Condition of the English Working Class in 1844 written by Friedrich Engels while living and working in Manchester.

Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel Hard Times in the city, and while it is partly modelled on Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Elizabeth Gaskell

Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, was born and educated in Manchester. Little Wilson and Big God, the first volume of his autobiography, includes a detailed account of his early life in the city between 1917 and 1940.

Howard Jacobson, born in Prestwich, an area with a strong Jewish community, has written about post-war Manchester in The Mighty Walzer (1999) and Kalooki Nights (2006).

The Manchester novelist Maurice Procter was an early author of police procedural novels. Procter's Hell is a City (1954) is set in a fictionalised Manchester, later filmed in the city with lead roles for Donald Pleasence and Stanley Baker

The German writer W. G. Sebald lived in Manchester when he first settled in England, and the city features prominently in his novel The Emigrants.

The Mancunian Jeff Noon set his early novels, including Vurt, in a future dystopian Manchester.

Nicholas Blincoe set his first three novels in Manchester, including Acid Casuals (1995), based around the nightclub The Hacienda and Manchester Slingback (1998), focussing on the Gay Village of Canal Street.

Carl Hart's druggy lovestory 'The Obvious Game' (2006) is set amongst the straight and gay night life of Manchester in the early 1990's.

The Scottish crime writer Val McDermid lived in the city for many years and set her Lindsay Gordon and Kate Brannigan series in Manchester.

Carcanet Press, founded as a poetry magazine, began publishing poetry collections and novels in the early 1970s under the editorship of Michael Schmidt Schmidt was one of the first directors of the Manchester Metropolitan University Writers School, whose staff currently includes Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy. This school and the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing are two of the top creative writing schools in the country.

The Writer's Bureau — a private company set up to help new freelance writers through its home-study courses — runs its offices from Manchester.

In Manchester from October 2006 is the Manchester Literature Festival.

Billy Hopkins - best-selling debut novel, OUR KID, is set in Manchester.

Theatre

Manchester is noted for its excellent theatres. Larger venues include Manchester Opera House, a commercial theatre promoting large scale touring shows which regularly plays host to touring West End shows, the Palace Theatre and the Royal Exchange Theatre, a large producing theatre in Manchester’s former Cotton Exchange. The Library Theatre is a small producing theatre situated in the basement of the city’s central library, and the Lowry Centre is a large touring venue in Salford.

Smaller sites include the Green Room which focuses on fringe productions, the Contact Theatre, a theatre for young people with a bold contemporary design, and Studio Salford, the theatre and music venue at Bloom Street, Salford. The Dancehouse is a theatre dedicated to dance productions. The city is also home to two highly-regarded drama schools; The Manchester Metropolitan University School of Theatre and the Arden School of Theatre. Unlike Arden, Man Met School of Theatre is accredited by the NCDT (National Council for Drama Training) and is a member of the Conference of Drama Schools. In addition the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) has 4 theatre spaces especially noted for its opera and classical music productions. Manchester Theatres provides a guide to the theatres in the city and its environs.

Venues

As well as many sporting venues Manchester has many venues for performances and conventions:

Manchester Central - Comprising two separate venues formerly known as the GMEX Centre and Manchester International Conference Centre (MICC) respectively.
Bridgewater Hall
MEN Arena - Europe's most capacious indoor arena.
Manchester Academy
Manchester Apollo
Old Trafford Cricket Ground

International associations

Some international institutes, as the Alliance Française de Manchester

on Oxford Street, play an important role on the cultural life of the city.

Gay and lesbian

Manchester has claimed to have the UK's largest gay population outside of London. Gay Village, centred on the Canal Street area, is home to numerous shops, restaurants, bars and clubs. On the last weekend in August it hosts the Manchester Pride Festival (previously known as Mardi Gras and Gayfest).

Manchester’s gay culture was brought to mainstream attention on television series Queer as Folk and Coronation Street, which are set in the Village. It is also the birthplace of several gay rights organisations including the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, Queer Youth Alliance, The Lesbian & Gay Foundation. Manchester has its own gay sports teams, Village Manchester FC (soccer), Northern Wave (swimming) and Village Spartans (Rugby) which take part in Manchester's annual Pride Games.

The year round gay and lesbian heritage trail exhibits Manchester’s gay history. In 2003, Manchester played host city to the annual Europride festival. The Lesbian and Gay Foundation, Britain's biggest gay charity, is based on Princess Street in the city centre. Manchester Metropolitan University has been named the most gay friendly university in the UK.