Festival of Libraries

Manchester’s Festival of Libraries returns for 2024. This celebration of Greater Manchester’s 133 libraries takes place annually across the city.

The festival, which is supported by Arts Council England, features a vibrant programme that highlights the library network’s full offer, across wellbeing, culture and creativity, digital and information, and, of course, reading.

The Festival of Libraries programme takes place in (and out of!) internationally renowned institutions from Manchester’s rich tapestry of heritage libraries, including Central Library, with its impressive status as the busiest public library in the country, in addition to Chetham’s Library, The Portico Library, Manchester Poetry Library and the John Rylands Research Institute and Library. Also featured will be Greater Manchester’s equally important and vital local libraries that deliver much needed support and services to their communities.

This festival allows citizens to celebrate the key role that libraries play in civic life. Partner libraries around the city host performances, exhibitions, concerts, art, film, writing classes, and public debates. Writers, illustrators and musicians are commissioned to respond to the vital role libraries play to the people of Manchester.

Members of Out In The City attended an event “What’s in a word, what’s in a dictionary?” in the Portico Library.

With its discreet side entrance, leading onto an initially unpromising set of winding stairs, the well-hidden Portico Library is one of Manchester city centre’s finest gems.

It first opened in 1806 as a members library and newsroom – a place where gentlemen (and women, after the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act, and including the industrial novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell) could gather to digest the shipped-in news from London. Over two centuries later, it is one of Manchester’s longest running organisations and oldest buildings still fulfilling its original function. A lot has changed in that time, however.

Whilst still retaining much of its original character, any hint of musty Victorianism has been thoroughly dispelled. Today, the Library is a cultural hub which hosted the event with the Linguistic Diversity Collective – a group of academics at the University of Manchester. It was a participatory workshop around words and definitions.

Earlier we had enjoyed tomato, pepper and red lentil soup plus a sandwich and altogether we had a very pleasant day.

A Most Queer House

Sunday, 16 June – 7.15pm (44 minutes) – BBC Radio 3

For more than 150 years, 9 Lower Mall, Hammersmith has been a home or a haven for creative homosexuals and bohemians who enriched the cultural life of the eras in which they lived.  

Early habitués included the American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn and the painter Henry Scott Tuke. The secret homosexual society, the Order of Chaeronea, met there and went on to become a worldwide fraternity in the Victorian era, the first LGBT+ organisation. Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas visited frequently. Theatre manager George Devine moved into the house in 1953 and created the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre with George Goetschius and Tony Richardson. 9 Lower Mall became a hub for a generation of playwrights and directors.  It was where unknown playwright John Osborne speculatively slipped his script of ‘Look Back in Anger’ through the letterbox.

Clare Barlow, the curator of the Tate Britain ‘Queer British Art’ exhibition; Zorian Clayton, the Prints Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum; artist Jez Dolan; art historian Richard Cork; Professor Sue Healy; architectural historian Alan Powers; dramatist Nicholas Wright and Harriet Devine tell the story of a most queer house.

The presenter is Matt Cook, professor of the history of sexuality at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.

My Gay Best Friend 2024

Friday, 21 June 7.30pm – 9.30pm
The Kings Arms, 11 Bloom Street, Salford M3 6AN
£5.00 + £1.00 booking fee

My Gay Best Friend (and other unspoken letters of LGBTQIA+ Identity) is returning for its second year!

It feels now more than ever, with the world so divided, we need an event to uplift and celebrate the LGBTQIA+ voices in a safe environment, whist also bringing awareness towards the daily struggles and battles members of the community face on a day-to-day basis.

What one thing that you’ve wanted to say to your straight mates but never had the chance to? How much of our struggles and joys do straight people really know about the LGBTQIA+ community?

‘My Gay Best Friend’ is the event that aims to be an annual anthology series in which LGBTQIA+ identifying writers are commissioned to express their personal and political opinions of something that are often left unspoken. Sometimes comical, sometimes emotional, sometimes political, but always honest and personal to the writer. These monologues / letters / speeches will be written and sealed, before being opened and read by the straight identifying actors live for the first time on the night in front of the audience.

For this year’s event, five new pieces of work have been commissioned and will be spoken aloud for the very first time live on stage.

Get tickets here.

Arts for Good Health

Arts for Good Health Courses are free wellbeing courses.

To access the courses you must be:

• Over the age of 18; and

• Be a Manchester resident (Have a Manchester GP and/or pay council tax to Manchester City Council).

How to Refer

You can self-refer to the Arts for Good Health courses. Go to https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/arts-for-good-health/ and download the A4GH Self Referral Form.

Pride in Our Art

This is one of the courses to celebrate Manchester Pride.

This 5-week course will focus on the work of 4 LGBTQ+ Artists:

• Keith Vaughan

• Joan Eardsley

• Greer Lankton and Juno Birch

• Andy Warhol

Each week we will look at the work of each artist, discuss their lives, what inspired them and the techniques they used to create their art.

We will then create our own unique pieces inspired by each artist and the creative methods they used.

Details

Date: Every Thursday from 1 August until 29 August 2024

Duration: 5 weeks

Time: 11.00am – 1.00pm

Venue: Start (Cornbrook Enterprise Centre), Quenby Street, Hulme, M15 4HW

Tutor: Stephen Davis 07776 994 702

Rainbow Lottery Super Draw!

Please support Out In The City by buying a Rainbow Lottery ticket or two (or more!) It’s a vital part of our fundraising as we receive 50p for every £1 spent and you have the chance to win cash prizes from £25 for three numbers up to a jackpot of £25,000 for six numbers.

Buy tickets here.

We are thrilled to announce an exciting opportunity for you to win a £1,000 Amazon eGift Card through The Rainbow Lottery this June. Whether you’re looking to upgrade your tech gadgets, refresh your home decor, or treat yourself to the latest fashion trends, Amazon has it all – what a way to kick off summer!

On Saturday 29 June, one lucky winner will walk away with a £1,000 Amazon voucher: stock up on smart home tech, fill your shelves with books, get your garden (or your wardrobe!) summer-ready – the choice is yours. Nothing you need online right now? Spend it your way, with the £1,000 cash alternative! 

If you already have tickets then you’re in with a chance to win big – but don’t forget, you can top-up your tickets just for the week of the Super Draw!

Play Now!