Over the course of a year Quarantine took over a house on the new Urban Splash development – Irwell Riverside, joining the local Facebook group and calling it home. 

I worked on the project as a curator and producer. Hosting artists from asking them to stay in our house and make something happen in the city that in some way responded to the house itself, its neighbourhood and Manchesters rapid development into a northern urban ‘powerhouse’. It asked questions about who is making the decisions? Who is benefitting? What is it like to live amongst huge urban change? What’s getting lost? What new communities are being formed?

At the end of our Tenancy we put on a 2 day event – Meet the Neighbours: The weekend, inviting local people, property developers, urban planners, artists, academics, activists and musicians to Manchester’s famous Sachas Hotel, creating a kind of interactive symposium talking about and exploring the rapid development of the city, who is it affecting, what it means for the cities future and what needs to be reconsidered. 

Tenancy & Meet the Neighbours was Co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, Meet the Neighbours took place in Manchester and Salford, UK; Béthune, Lillers & Bruay-la-Bussiere, France; Lublin, Poland; Marrakech, Morocco; and Groningen, Netherlands.

More information on the project here.