Antoine Christmas movie

Our French Community Reporters visit to Manchester and their time at the Christmas markets

Christmas guests in Manchester

Our French Community Reporters at the Christmas markets in Manchester

The Open University Event, Longsight

The Open University’s presentation in Longsight, Manchester in October 2010.

Zippo’s Circus

Michelle and Ian’s trip to the Circus!

Video Post Cards Through Time

Clips from the video booth we had here at the roby on our open day on the 17th of July 2010.

Making an exhibition of yourself at the Royal Exchange

There’s an argument that says being part of a social networking site, writing a blog, or having a Twitter account is all about self-promotion, developing the ‘Brand of Me’, or at worst, self-indulgent naval-gazing. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people say ‘but what’s the point of it all? Why do you spend time telling the world what you had for breakfast?’

Personally, I rarely mention what I had for breakfast online (I tend to focus on dinner), but I do enjoy the glimpse sites like Twitter give into people’s everyday experiences. If my train’s delayed in Manchester, I find it strangely comforting to discover that Dave, the guy I talk to about blogging on Twitter, is suffering the same fate in Devon.

But then, I’m interested  in the everyday. I once visited the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, and ignored the tanks and films and interactive stuff, preferring to gaze for hours at the contents of a typical WW2 soldier’s backpack.

A new exhibition at the Royal Exchange Theatre is focusing on exactly that kind of minutiae – creating an exhibition about the private displays we make in our own homes. And, if you’re feeling brave, you could be part of it.

The Royal Exchange team have put together a list of activities they’d like people to complete and submit to them by 10th December to help them assemble the exhibition.

Here’s the list:

MAKE A MAP – make a map of your room, flat, house – any kind of map – a map that shows on it the things that matter to you.
YOUR LISTS – collect up some of your old lists – shopping lists, reminders, to-do lists etc.

YOUR DOOR – take a photo of your door (could be a back door, front door, your room door).

CORNERS OF HOME – examine three corners of your home. Draw them, photograph them or write about them.

DREAMS – write or draw a dream.

NIGHTMARES – write or draw a nightmare.

YOU CAN PUT YOUR CONTENT INTO THE COLLECTION BOX AT THE ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE’S EDUCATION LOUNGE, OR SEND IT VIA FREEPOST TO: EXCHANGE EDUCATION, ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE, FREEPOST (MR8027) MANCHESTER M2 8BL.

The resulting exhibition will be on display at the theatre on Thursday 14th & Friday 15th January 2010 – 10:30am-7:30pm, and Saturday 16th January 11am – 8pm.

 

Competing for the People’s Millions

My inbox has been deluged with information about the PEOPLE’S MILLIONS project this week. It’s the TV show that distributes Big Lottery funding to community projects. Each night during this year’s voting period, two shortlisted projects will be featured on the local ITV regional news (in our case Granada Reports) between 6-6:30pm, then they’ll face a telephone vote to determine which of them receives that day’s funding.

Tomorrow, Manchester’s own Longford Park will be up against Windmill Hill Primary School in Runcorn, two garden-creation projects battling for support.

The project’s website http://www.peoplesmillions.org.uk/regions/granada/ allows you to view the @peoplesmillions Twitter feed, and you can register your details to support and endorse your chosen project, but that’s NOT the same as voting for it, which has to be done by phone during the voting period.

Is this as good a way as any to distribute funding – does it give people more say? And does it depend more on the ability of the individual projects to market themselves and mobilise support for their bid? After all, nobody wants to suffer the same fate as Jedward did on Sunday, now do they?

How far would you go to join a social network?

How far would you go to join a social network? When you signed up for Facebook you might have spent a fair amount of time filling in fascinating information about yourself, where you went to school, the bands you like or the places you’ve worked.

Opening a Twitter account probably entailed several minutes’ deliberation over your username, and Flickr requires you to sit and upload or tag all your photos, which can admittedly take some time.

But would you go as far as having your membership information tattooed on your body? That’s what the arts organisation Ultimate Holding Company is asking of one hundred volunteers to do for a new exhibition at Chapel Street in Salford.

On the face of it, Ext-Inked is simply an exhibition of drawings illustrating the one hundred most endangered species in the British Isles. The drawings, which feature everything from a red squirrel to an ‘erratic ant’, went on display at Unit 108, Chapel Street, Salford, M3 5DW on 12th November, and will be on show 10am – 6pm every day until 1st December.

But between 26th and 29th November, the exhibition takes a twist, and becomes a groundbreaking social experiment. With help from expert tattooists from Ink & Steel, the drawings will be converted into tattoos, and a hundred ‘ambassadors’ will volunteer to have the designs etched onto their skin for posterity – to form a very exclusive social network of representatives for the endangered species.

Tattooing will happen live at Chapel Street over the weekend of 26th-29th November, beginning at 7:30pm on the 26th. Volunteers can sign up at any time during the exhibition’s run, but the species are being assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you’ve got a particular fondness for a fungus, or a long-held wish to be tattooed with the likeness of a lizard, you’d better move fast…

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

JOIN THE EXT-INKED FACEBOOK GROUP

 

 

DaVinci the Genius hits Ning…

Another great project in Manchester today – and we’re still with the museums sector. MOSI – the Museum of Science and Industry down in Castlefield have created a whole site to support the Manchester leg of the Da Vinci the Genius exhibition which is on show at MOSI from 14th November 2009 to 13th June 2010. They’ve built the site using Ning.com, where you can create your own social network around anything you like.

There’s loads of information and links on the Manchester Da Vinci site – a discussion forum, lots of links to interactive content, and a whole range of Da Vinci-related videos and images. You can even take The Genius Test to find out if you’re as clever as Leonardo himself. I, unsurprisingly, am not..

Looking for Women Like You

So I’m resurrecting the MyManchester editor’s blog. Jess, the former editor has moved on to pastures new (Vancouver, to be precise), so I’ve taken over – I’m Kate, and you can catch me on kate@peoplesvoicemedia.co.uk

The plan is to use this blog to highlight great stuff going on in the world of social media, especially in Manchester and the Northwest, and to shout about the Community Reporters’ programme and other goings on here.

First up, I’ve just found out about a brilliant social media-based project that the Pankhurst Centre and Manchester Art Gallery are putting together. Women Like You. The aim is to produce the first public art to celebrate women in Manchester. It’s simple – all you have to do is visit the Facebook group and upload a photo of a woman (or women, I guess) that has inspired you. It could be your Grandma, the Queen, or Lady Gaga.

You’ve got until 30th November 2009 to get your pictures in – if you don’t want to upload via Facebook you can also drop them off in special collecting boxes at the Pankhurst Centre, 60-62 Nelson Street, Manchester M13, or at Manchester Art Gallery or Manchester Central Library between 1st November and 1st December (be aware that pictures can’t be returned, though).

Once all the images are in, artist Charlotte Newson will use them to create a huge portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the suffragettes. The portrait will appear on the billboards across the city, and at Manchester Art Gallery to celebrate International Women’s Day, then from 6th March – 9th May 2010.

I’m off to find a really good pic of my Grandma to contribute – quite fancy seeing her face on a billboard…..even if it is part of someone else’s face in the end……

Kate