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Saddleworth Independent •

Orchestra legend says ‘cello’ to Uppermill

“THE MUSIC industry is completely different because of the internet. It’s a whole new situation, and in some ways, that’s also dangerous. Students’ careers will be made or broken through social media.” 
That’s the verdict of Victoria Simonsen, internationally award-winning cellist and professor at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Her chamber music performances have been broadcast in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand, and her performances have taken her across the world – and to Saddleworth, f...
Saddleworth Independent •

‘Petrol heads’ pull together for Scouthead and Austerlands Motor Show

WHAT DO a Cadillac, an army tank, and the world’s only steam-powered Land Rover have in common? 
As it happens, not much – but that did not stop them from parking together on a field in Scouthead. 
150 cars, motorbikes, tractors, and other vehicles stood proudly on display across Dawson’s Field, painstakingly put together for the Scouthead and Austerlands Community Group Motor Show.  
Now on its second year, the number of entries had more than doubled since its launch last summer. The charity ev...
Saddleworth Independent •

Pianist Rose McLachlan: ‘Teaching gives you a bigger perspective of what’s important’

AN AWARD-WINNING pianist who has been a star since she was a teenager has brought her talents to Uppermill.
Rose McLachlan was only 13-years-old when she debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She was 14 when she won the Scottish International Youth Prize at the Royal Conservatoire of Music, and she was 15 when she won the Yamaha Prize in the 2017 EPTA UK Piano Competition.
After turning 16, she won two awards with the Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra and at 17 she won the junior intercollegiate...
Saddleworth Independent •

Millgate Arts Centre gives audiences a backstage pass

“I’VE BEEN involved at the Lyceum and at the Playhouse 2 in Shaw – but this is the place which feels like home.” 
So says Pauline Walsh, theatre director and long-time member of the Millgate Arts Centre in Delph.
Strewn across the stage behind her sits a podium, balcony, and a large banner that reads ‘Degrees for Women’ – the leftovers of the theatre’s latest play, Blue Stockings.  
But on this one unusual evening, however, there is not a single cast member in sight. Rather, it is the visitors w...
Saddleworth Independent •

Uppermill Summer Music Festival is high note for opera star

“I ALWAYS think this could be my last performance. You never know when you’re going to get to sing something again or work with the same people again, but I also think it’s good: it makes you enjoy every minute of it.” 
A life in the spotlight was by no means a dream that came easily to Kathryn Rudge. Born in Liverpool to a family of non-musicians, the now multi-award winning opera singer could never have imagined she would one day be lighting up stages the world over.
Since graduating from the...
Saddleworth Independent •

British Empire Medal for Saddleworth environmentalist

A SADDLEWORTH woman who founded a community hydroelectricity project has been honoured  – and says she hopes her work will get more people talking about the environment.  
Alison Brittle was awarded a British Empire Medal in the King’s Birthday Honours list for her services to Saddleworth, thanks to her work on Saddleworth Community Hydro in Greenfield.
Based at Dove Stone Reservoir, the project uses a cross flow turbine to generate renewable electricity, and saves more than 170 tonnes of carbon...
Saddleworth Independent •

Walking football club kicks off ahead of new kit

WALKING football is a much faster game than its name might suggest. 
That is the key takeaway from a Friday match at the Saddleworth Walking Football Club, where more than 70 members are united by a common goal – seeing how fast they can go when the referee’s not looking.  
Twice a week, up to 20 men and women gather in the fields at Saddleworth Leisure Centre for a kickabout and cuppa.
Most are above the age of 60, though the club attracts members from all age groups. The eldest, Keith, is 75 –...
Quays Life •

"You get three generations of the same family, all laughing at the same thing - that's just so rare now" - Jonty Stephens

Jonty Stephens and Ian Ashpitel talk to Leslie Kerwin about reliving the magic of Morecambe and Wise on stage.


“Every year we did a show for the Stage Golfing Society. They did a ‘70s variety show and asked if I would do Eric Morecambe,” Jonty Stephens says. Sat buttoned up and thickly-bespectacled in the Lowry theatre bar, he could break into the act at any moment. Next to him, equally crisp with an easy grin, fellow actor Ian Ashpitel perches on his seat.


“And I said, well, I need an Ern...
Quays Life •

Artist Emily Simpson on capturing Salford’s complex and diverse identity in textiles

Born in Salford and having lived elsewhere, Emily Simpson is used to the city’s reputation as Manchester’s indignant shadow.


“Salford is always the other city,” she says. “It has a confusing, complex identity that is often squashed, forgotten, or associated with negative things, because it is quite a complex place.”


The twinned history of Manchester and Salford’s manufacturing, engineering, and the arts give way thanks to the split of the River Irwell, from which has grown two separate id...
Stockport Nub News •

Stockroom unveils Christopher Isherwood exhibition as part of LGBTQ+ History Month

"Come and wallow in voluptuous sin: Christopher Isherwood's 'Berlin Stories' now read almost like vignettes of nearly forgotten history. They blaze into life only because of his enchantingly wicked heroine, Sally Bowles." 

So reads a scrap of long-forgotten news review, carefully clipped by a superfan to whom a gay immigrant who rejected his nationality was a more enchanting hero than the star of 'I Am a Camera'.
Quays Life •

Sadiq Ali on using circus to challenge outdated beliefs about HIV

When Sadiq Ali was diagnosed HIV+ during his circus training at NCCA, he witnessed the fear and ignorance that still surrounds the virus. He talks to Leslie Kerwin about his new work, ‘Tell Me’, created in consultation with HIV charities Positively UK and CHIVA (Children’s HIV Association) as an open letter response to his experiences told through Chinese Pole, aerial artistry and physical theatre.

Now wrapping up the final week of rehearsals, award-winning performer and activist, Sadiq Ali i...
Quays Life •

Climate change, AI and finding hope in artistic activism

AI meets nature in a new interdisciplinary exhibition at Lowry from January which sees artists, John-Paul Brown and Sophy King, look beyond climate grief into a future of possibilities.


It is 2076 – the climate crisis is fading, the Earth is in recovery, humanity is rebuilding, and the world is breathing a sigh of relief on its second chance at life. Beneath it all stretches the biggest communication network humanity has never seen, a tangled chimera of fungus and A.I. curling deep beneath t...
Quays Life •

Samantha Fernando's music is balm for winter's long, cold nights

Amid a blizzard of Christmas markets, holiday shoppers, and one of the coldest Novembers in years, composer Samantha Fernando is stepping out to bring a moment of calm to Manchester this winter. Her latest orchestral piece, Wintering, asks: what if we made peace with the darkest time of year?


Featuring The Marian Consort vocal ensemble and the Manchester Collective’s string quartet, the Wintering tour comes to Stoller Hall on 27 November for an evening of healing, restoration, and clarity....
The Northern Quota •

The day three future presidents visited Chorlton

One morning in autumn, three future presidents, a Communist boxer, and a feminist descended on the Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall. In the October of 1945, 87 delegates from more than 20 nations gathered before an audience of hundreds. While Britain’s soldiers recovered in a newly-freed Europe, veterans from the wider Empire had just returned home to nations still engulfed by imperial violence.


Decades later, organisations across Manchester are looking back on the 80th anniversary of the Fifth...
The Northern Quota •

DJ Paulette: From the living room to Europe and back

From the minute she could stand, Paulette Constable knew her place was above the crowds. As a little girl, she spent her days on her miniature typewriter writing weekly zines into the backs of cornflake boxes – and spent her evenings on the stage, performing for her seven sisters on the little step in the living room. “And I’d fall off the step and my sisters would laugh at me and I’d look at them and go, ‘you’ll pay to come and see me one day’.”


Now 58, DJ Paulette couldn’t have been truer t...
The Northern Quota •

Manchester academic named Archaeologist of the Year

A Manchester academic has been named 2025’s Archaeologist of the Year thanks to her work in Egyptology and distance-teaching research.


Professor Joyce Tyldesley OBE won the title following a public vote in the Current Archaeology magazine, the biggest archaeology publication in the UK.


“I’m still totally, amazed. It’s brilliant, it’s great – I can’t put it into words really,” she said. “It’s difficult to express how deeply honoured I feel.”


After 15 years in the field, Joyce now teaches...
aAh! Magazine •

Manchester Met student hosts new BBC Radio 4 podcast

Featured image: Ian Burke


A Manchester Met journalism student has found himself at the heart of a new episode of BBC Radio 4’s Illuminated, after two years broadcasting his unique journey across the UK’s bus networks on his own podcast, Slower Travel – Adventures by Bus.


Speaking to aAh! Magazine, Multimedia Journalism student Ian Burke opened up about experience as the star of Illuminated’s ‘Night Bus episode, where he explored Manchester’s night buses during a trip across the city. Refle...
The Northern Quota •

Man Met journalism student hosts BBC radio show about taking the night bus around Manchester

A Man Met journalism student is featuring on his own podcast episode on BBC Radio 4 about his journeys on Manchester’s night buses.


Speaking exclusively to NQ, student Ian Burke shared his journey to becoming the latest voice of Radio 4’s Illuminated, where he celebrates Manchester’s night buses in a trip across the city.


“It’s like an experimental documentary, there’s all sorts of weird and wonderful things on there,” he said.


For his podcast, Ian travels on Manchester’s V1 bus from Ox...
The Northern Quota •

Gary Younge: 'Racism is a language of many dialects'

“I came into journalism through language, because I studied to be an interpreter and a translator. It was in the process of knowing how to translate that I fell in love with language, and the ability to manipulate it, to work it, knead it, and make it do what I wanted it to do.”


The Whitworth Gallery’s Grand Hall was packed on Thursday night as over a hundred people attended to commemorate Dr. Sook-Kyung Lee’s appointment as Professor of Curatorial Practices at the University of Manchester. I...
The Northern Quota •

Jamie Laing: 'My brain was all over the place'

Radio One’s Jamie Laing talked about ADHD, mental health, and Comic Relief in a panel discussion held at Man Met on Monday (20 January).


The event was the first of January’s Future Me Week line-up, which aims to give students opportunities to expand their skills and experience outside of the classroom through workshops and talks. He was followed in the panel by Sky Sports’ Miriam Walker-Khan and GB Paralympian Gregg Stevenson, who gave their own insight to their careers and life experience....
The Northern Quota •

Man Met hosts GB Paralympian and Sky Sports reporter for Future Me Week

Sky Sports’ Miriam Walker-Khan and GB Paralympic rower Gregg Stevenson opened up about their lives and careers for ManMet’s Future Me Week on Monday (20 January).


The pair spoke in a panel discussion on the first day of January’s Future Me Week lineup, which aims to give students opportunities to expand their skills and experience outside of the classroom through workshops and talks.


They followed on from BBC Radio One’s Jamie Laing, who talked about his own experiences on Made in Chelsea...
aAh! Magazine •

Lights Up: Exhibition celebrating women in cycling launches at Station South

The aAh! Magazine X Lights Up Exhibition celebrates the achievements of women in cycling and supports inclusivity and visibility within our community


An art exhibition empowering Manchester’s female cycling community has been unveiled in Levenshulme’s Station South, following the city’s second annual Lights Up night-time cycle event.


The exhibition was created as part of the Lights Up cycling campaign led by Manchester’s cycling mayor Belinda Everett, which aims to challenge the underrepre...