In 2018, the School of Social Sciences’ ‘Our Migration Story’ team and the Runnymede Trust partnered with the award-winning Olympias Music Foundation to work in a local Manchester School. Funded by ESRC Impact Acceleration funds, the collaboration centred on six weeks of oral history and writing workshops with Year 9 pupils at Dean Trust Ardwick. The result was 60 unique family histories of migration to Manchester, researched and written by the pupils there.

Based on this work, Olympias Music Foundation was awarded Arts Council England funding to create a collaborative music education project with young people from the school. The project, ‘Making Manchester’ explores communities’ shared experiences of migration, through live music, poetry and physical theatre. ‘Making Manchester’ builds on a large-scale poem by Shamshad Khan with performances by Kabantu, Vonnegut Collective, and directed by University of Manchester graduate Emma Doherty. The show culminates in a 60-strong choir of the pupils from Dean Trust Ardwick, performing the words and music that they have devised from their own stories.

Two performances of Making Manchester will take place at the Niamos Radical Arts Centre at 7:30pm on 27 and 28 June, followed by a post-show Q&A. Tickets are £5 and are available online from Skiddle, Tickets For Good, or on the door. For more information visit the website.