Directory of activities

Search these pages to explore a selection of our directory of activities. You can use the keyword search and filter buttons to discover how we are addressing each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the five priorities in our Social Responsibility and Civic Engagement Plan. You can also filter activities by location and function.



searching subjects: Cultural engagement

Museum of the year awards

Manchester Museum has been named as a runner-up in Art Fund Museum of the Year 2024. The Museum received a prize of £15,000 as one of four runners-up, alongside Craven Museum, Dundee Contemporary Arts, National Portrait Gallery and Young V&A. 

Manchester Museum has been praised for the work it has done to collaborate with communities and foster a unique sense of belonging. The award-winning South Asia Gallery is co-curated with 30 people from the South Asian diaspora, and the Museum’s Top Floor has become a social and environmental justice hub, opening opportunities for educational and environmental charities to benefit from its collections, resources and research. 

Community Festival

Each year we throw open our doors for our local friends and neighbours to discover the variety of work we do here at the University. This free day is jam-packed with fun activities for all the family, including interactive demonstrations, musical and drama performances, and behind the scenes tours.   

Our Community Festival offers an inviting, informal space for visitors to meet our staff and students and community partners, and for us to take part in conversations that connect and inspire. 

Talk 200 lecture and podcast series

Talk 200 is a lecture and podcast series from the University to mark our bicentenary: 200 years of making a difference. We’re reflecting on our past, celebrating our present and looking to the future – and Talk 200 invites listeners to be part of the journey.  

The series comprises a mix of in-person and live-streamed lectures and recorded podcast episodes. Our podcast host, Manchester aficionado, author and University of Manchester alumnus Andy Spinoza, is joined by a diverse line-up of guests from our community. Topics include health, digital and AI, climate change, equality and justice, and more. 

NCCPE Platinum Watermark

Our University has been awarded a Platinum Watermark by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) which is the highest honour that can be granted to an institution. The award recognises our exceptional contribution to public engagement which includes the way we work to engage society with activities in research, teaching and culture. We received praise for our efforts in making campus more welcoming and accessible for community use, involving partners and communities in shaping the research and teaching at the University, and our significant commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. Find examples of our local, national and international public engagement work here. 

The Whitworth Gallery of Sanctuary status

The University’s Whitworth gallery is the first gallery in the North-West of England to proudly join the hundreds of local councils, schools, universities, libraries, and cultural institutes who have Sanctuary status, pledging to create a culture of solidarity and inclusivity, and welcome people from a forced displacement background. The Sanctuary Awards recognise and celebrate the organisations who go above and beyond to welcome people seeking sanctuary.

Manchester Museum repatriation project

Our Manchester Museum has been working with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and the Anindilyakwa Land Council on a landmark repatriation project, returning 174 cultural heritage items to the Aboriginal Anindilyakwa community of Australia’s Northern Territory. The process of returning these items has supported Anindilyakwa cultural strengthening and revitalisation.

Founders and Funders

Founders and Funders: Slavery and the building of a University is an exhibition at the University’s John Rylands Research Institute. It explores how profits from slave trading, ownership of enslaved people, and manufacturing with slave-grown cotton funded the cultural and educational development of Manchester. Core to the exhibition is research conducted by a diverse team of emerging scholars who undertook the Race, Migration & Humanitarianism: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism in the Modern World module as part of their MA History. This is an important step on a journey we started with the initial research into our University’s links to slavery, in conjunction with seeking the views of staff, students and alumni.

Undergraduate courses and the SDGs

Our University is working towards kite-marking all undergraduate courses with the relevant United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) they address. This will enable prospective students to immediately see which SDGs the course they are interested in links to and how that learning will make a difference in the world. Following the successful pilot project in our Faculty of Science and Engineering, work is now underway for all undergraduate courses to be kite marked within our Faculty of Humanities, followed by courses offered by our Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health.

Multilingual World

Multilingual World is a podcast hosted by Dr Serge Sagne, a lecturer in linguistics and current lead of the Linguistic Diversity Collective where he explores  multilingualism and linguistic diversity across the globe. The video podcast features Dr Sagna in conversation with leading academics, and multilingual speakers living in Manchester where they discuss their relationship with language, identity and their experience learning, transmitting, and using languages in Manchester. The podcast production is supported by Creative Manchester. Visit and subscribe to the Multilingual World YouTube channel here.

International Mother Language Day

We participate in the UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day every year, celebrating the cultural diversity and multilingualism in Manchester. The events to commemorate this day are focused on language and are led by our libraries, community groups, neighbouring schools, poets, and writers.

Making a Difference Awards

Each year, we host the Making a Difference Awards to celebrate the incredible and inspiring work of our University community. The awards highlight the extensive range of social responsibility initiatives of our staff, students, alumni and external partners, and covers categories such as benefit to research; widening participation; environmental sustainability and equality, diversity and inclusion.

Global University Social Responsibility MOOC

Our university has contributed to the Global University Social Responsibility Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), which allows users to learn about the general framework of university social responsibility as well as understand effective practices to design, plan, implement, and evaluate their own activities.

Top floor of Manchester Museum

Manchester Museum’s Top Floor is a space for people to come together to learn, share ideas and connect with the community. You’ll find education groups, charities, artists, writers, staff and students co-working and collaborating here, with a shared commitment to social and environmental justice. The Museum has also appointed Hannah Hartley as the Environmental Action Manager, where she works across all areas of the museum to drive forward its ambitions in environmental thinking and action, establishing sustainable practices, and building on the Museum’s rich experience in developing narratives and programming in response to the climate crisis.

Manchester Museum’s Indigenise Speaker Series

Manchester Museum is taking action to Indigenise and decolonise its collections. As part of this, they have been hosting annual Indigenise Speaker Series, which brings together Indigenous scholars and projects from around the world to participate in activities and discuss how to empower Indigenous communities and collaborate with them at the museum.

Manchester Museum’s Carbon Literacy toolkit

We launched the first ever museum-sector-specific Carbon Literacy toolkit as part of Roots & Branches, a partnership between Manchester Museum, Museum Development North West (MDNW), and The Carbon Literacy project. The toolkit helps museum professionals and volunteers undertake training, to then certify as Carbon Literate. This foundational work supports staff, volunteers, and partners to build their understanding of climate action, so that they can make informed sustainable choices. The project also encourages museums to develop organisational pledges to act against climate change.

Afrocats takeover at The Whitworth

Our Whitworth Art Gallery partners with the Afrocats to hold a series of creative events and workshops to drive social change. Afrocats is a female-led charity that works closely with communities to address and dismantle inequality by identifying and breaking down barriers. Their vision is to create a robust and more inclusive social environment for vulnerable asylum-seekers and refugees.

Schools Poetry Competition

Each year our University’s Creative Manchester hosts the Schools Poetry Competition, where students across Greater Manchester are encouraged to express themselves through writing poems relating to a particular theme. Winning entries from the competition are featured on Manchester City of Literature’s inaugural Schools Writing Trail, a city-wide exhibition of the ‘best of the best’ student writing displayed, in conjunction with the Festival of Libraries.

Being Human Festival

Being Human is the UK’s National Festival of the humanities, which celebrates how the discipline enriches everyday living and helps us understand a changing world. Each year, our researchers collaborate with local community and cultural partners to create exciting and engaging events and projects for all to enjoy.

Manchester-China Friendship Programme

Each year our Manchester China Institute teams up with the Manchester China Forum (MCF) and The University’s International Office to integrate new Chinese students into campus life, while simultaneously enriching the campus experience for local students. The Manchester-China Friendship Programme (MCFP) further seeks to develop mutual understanding and friendships between British and Chinese students which is particularly important at a time when anti-Asian prejudice, discrimination, and aggression has increased in the UK and around the world.

ScienceX

Our annual ScienceX festival is a flagship off-campus event run by our Faculty of Science and Engineering. The festival strives to inspire the upcoming generations of scientists and engineers through an array of fun and captivating workshops and activities that offer a genuine insight into science and engineering. Previous years have included science tricks to dancing robots, meteorites, building towers and making graphene.

Social responsibility partnerships

Examples of our civic partnerships include:

We also prioritise global partnerships to advance our work towards the SDGs. These include:

Public engagement partnerships

We partner with a range of organisations to carry out meaningful public engagement with diverse audiences and share ideas and research as well as inspiring informed discussion, debate and creativity.

Examples include:

Student learning partnerships

We’re committed to empowering students with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to address all of the SDGs through partnerships with public, private and civil society organisations.

Our University Living Lab platform connects student projects with external organisations to address the SDGs.

Our Volunteer Hub acts to advance partnerships between hundreds of charities and our student volunteers.

And many academic programmes offer service-learning partnerships, where external organisations benefit from practical student interventions in areas such as dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, business and legal advice.

In Place of War project

In Place of War (IPOW) is a global spin-out charity from research in our School of Music and Drama.

IPOW works with grassroots organisations in refugee camps, war-affected villages, towns under curfew, cities under occupation, and refugee communities, using creativity in places of conflict as a proven tool for positive change.

IPOW enables communities and grassroots change-makers in music, theatre and across the arts to transform a culture of violence and suffering into hope, opportunity and freedom.

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