This is a tour for those interested in the city's counterculture with an authentic voice from that scene, told through its street art. It is known as an anti-tour as it's heavily centred around critical thinking.
Discussing not only triumphs in architecture and heritage but real issues facing the city today from social justice to public spaces.
The tour tracks the transformation of the Northern Quarter since the 1970s when it was in decline in the wake of our first American-style shopping mall, the Arndale Centre, opening. The area, the one with the highest density of protected buildings in the city, was cited by cultural icon Tony Wilson in the early 90s as being 'our Detroit' owing to a mass evacuation of businesses.
Abandoned and ruined it was the public art that turned the area around from 1998 onwards. The tour discovers that original ceramic art trail and uses more modern street art in order to weave together the narrative.
MEET AT SHUDEHILL METROLINK BY THE BIKE RACKS
The Modern History of the Northern Quarter uses public art as the theme to tell the story of changes to the Northern Quarter, from success to dereliction and back again, since the 1970s.
It delves into gentrification, private vs public space, community groups, homelessness, drug use, and preservation and loss of heritage assets.
" Hayley Flynn, aka Skyliner, has been leading what has been described as “anti-tours” around Manchester for almost a decade. Her urban tours not only seek to reveal new things about the city to its inhabitants as well as its visitors, but to empower those on her tours with a sense that a city is a place created by those who live and work within it and that they too can and should contribute to the never-ending project that is improving the city.
— BBC Radio 4, Front Row"
