Summer in the city: what’s happening in and around Manchester

We’re rounding up our tour around Screen and Film School’s three home cities with a trip to Manchester, to hear from our local team there about what has been happening in and around the brilliant northern city this summer.

Like the whole of the UK, it has been one to remember. The long days have turned into weeks and months of endless sunshine. In Manchester, just like in Birmingham and Brighton, the events calendar has been jampacked, from May right the way through until now, and it doesn’t look like it is stopping anytime soon. That’s what Screen and Film School delivers to students – the chance to study and live in three incredibly vibrant, creative hubs. Manchester has had a busy summer, here are some of the highlights.

Across the recent August bank holiday weekend, the famous Manchester Pride once again proved to be the city’s biggest parade, grinding traffic to a halt as tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ people and their allies marched together for equality. Thousands more lined the streets to witness the spectacular parade of colour. Just like their friends at Brighton and Hove Pride, Manchester Pride is one of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ charities. Their vision is a world where LGBTQ+ people are free to live and love without prejudice.

Staying in the world of festivals, and two weeks prior to Pride, Alex Park played host to the 50th annual Caribbean Carnival. This prestigious festival brings the full Caribbean flavour to Manchester for a whole weekend through the sounds of Reggae, Calypso and Soca as they are pumped across the cityscape from powerful sound systems. There’s some disagreement as to precisely when the carnival started – some say it was the summer of 1970, others say 1971. What is certain is that a group of locals of mostly St Kits & Nevis and Trinidadian origin decided to throw an impromptu procession through the streets, just like they used to back home, and the now 50-year-old extravaganza was born.

Looking further back, to June, Manchester Day is an annual event that celebrates everything great about the city. It is a day for families, residents and visitors to get together and celebrate all things Mancunian that have made Manchester one of the world’s most iconic cities. Over 1,500 performers and artists from local communities bring Manchester city centre to life in a fantastic display of costume, sound and movement. An audience of more than 60,000 were wowed by the festivities this summer.

It was a huge summer of events in the city, after two years of uncertainty, but there was also a number of high-octane sporting occasions too: in the world of cycling, back in May, Manchester was the location for the most spectacular Grand Final to date of the Tour Series, Britain’s leading cycle race series. This new-for-2022 cycle track took place on a one-kilometre circuit centered around the world-famous Deansgate, with the finish line located very close to Screen and Film School Manchester’s campus on Floodgate Street.

Moving into the all-important world of film, and HOME, the brilliant venue where Screen and Film School Manchester will hold their upcoming induction event, welcomed the Manchester Indian Film Festival, which took place from 25 June to 6 July this summer. As well as that at HOME, to celebrate the National Day of Mexican Cinema on 15 Aug, they teamed up with the Mexican Embassy in the UK and the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City to bring a spectacular season of Mexican Golden Age Cinema to Manchester.

That was a whistle-stop round-up of events that have taken place in Manchester over the course of this glorious summer. This is what will greet our students when they walk through the doors at Screen and Film School Manchester very soon: they will be in the heart of one of the most interesting, creative places anywhere in the UK. A city which lives and breathes film, and our campus in Spinningfields is the perfect base for first year and second year students to launch themselves into the industry this September.

 

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