Best of 2019

2019 has been characterised by a precarious balance of full-time work, freelance work, conferences and attempts at academic writing. My primary output has been through the Fourdrinier, a new art writing site focused on work on paper, for which I have interviewed and written about artists including Jade Montserrat, Jenny Steele and Hondartza Fraga.

On Monday 15 April (it was made particularly memorable by the fact that later that day, in Paris, Notre Dame was to burn down), I was cycling to work in perfect conditions – sunny, windless and traffic-free due to the Easter holidays. Speeding along a straight section of the A6 on the borders of Lonsight and Ardwick, I realised my feet were racing around the pedals and I was going far too fast for the gear I was in. I tried to change gear, misbalanced, fell off and hit the road hard on my shoulder, breaking my collarbone. This put a stop to cycling for an interminable three months and, whilst I’ve now made a full recovery (unfortunately the recovery of Notre Dame looks far less certain), it sent me a message to try to slow down and take life at a bit less of a frantic pace. In spite of this, this is what I did manage to see/enjoy in 2019:

Travel

I spent two weeks in India this winter, which was an immersive sensory experience: there were so many sights, smells, sounds and colours to take in everywhere. I loved how colourful it was, particularly the clothing. In the UK I am used to standing out a lot with my colourful clothing. In India, it was the norm for people to wear bright yellows and greens and hot pinks.

One of the really big surprises was how green the cities were – there was such a variety of flowers and trees. In New Delhi, even the roundabouts were landscaped, and everywhere you looked were carefully tended pot plants. There was great variety in birds and animals: I was really excited by seeing ibises and eagles and bats, and colourful butterflies.

I really liked the street culture, and how alive the cities felt – the streets were used by people selling food, chai and clothes and offering services such as shoe shining and barbering. They felt like public spaces – families gathered in the parks and gardens, even after dark, picnicking or playing cricket. Everyone was really curious about visitors – people wanted to have selfies taken, to talk to you and find out where you were from and what you thought of India, and to shake your hand.

It was a vegetarian’s paradise: I loved eating idli, paratha, channa, uttapam, poha and bonda for breakfast every day, and trying regional dishes and variations on dosas and thalis and pani puri.

I enjoyed cosmopolitan New Delhi, especially the extraordinary eighteenth century Jantar Mantar observatory, and Mumbai, with its high concentration of luxurious art deco blocks, built on land reclaimed from the Arabian sea. However, visiting Chandigarh, the new capital city planned and designed for the Punjab post-partition by Le Corbusier (reached by a spacious train, with a lavish at-seat breakfast service consisting of multiple food courses and rounds of tea), was undoubtedly the highlight.

I loved exploring road inspector's Nek Chand's fantastical, magical rock garden – busy with families, selfie-taking couples and smartly-dressed, excitable parties of schoolchildren – and the grid-planned city's housing districts for government workers (enviable cycling infrastructure was designed into the city, and the bicycle appeared to be the dominant mode of transport, unlike car-choked Delhi), designed by Le Corbusier's cousin Pierre Jeanneret and the British couple Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, just as much as Le Corbusier's grandiose, awe-inspiring Capitol complex.

Whilst Gujarati city Ahmedabad is a World Heritage Site due to its high concentration of historic mosques, most of the city appeared to be a construction site: everywhere buildings were being knocked down and replaced with hotels and high-rise apartment blocks, leaving clouds of building dust. In spite of this, Le Corbusier's Millowners' Association was a real highlight of India. Formerly a centre of calico production, known as the 'Manchester of East', the Millowners' Association once overlooked the river to a view of hundreds of factory chimneys. Built as a networking space, and to show off new innovations in manufacturing, with its dramatic interplays of light and shadow, and fluidity between inside and outside spaces, this felt the closest I have ever felt to being inside a sculpture. Two houses built by Le Corbusier for mill-owning families felt like green oases as the city expanded around them.

In the summer I spoke at a conference in Porto, a sprawling city split across a river like Manchester-Salford or Newcastle-Gateshead. Full of old, hilly, cobbled streets to get lost in, a surprising amount of dereliction and facades with nothing behind, as well as the famous tiles which act like a ‘raincoat’ for the city, it was also strikingly rich in art deco buildings and details, from housing and cinemas to garages. The Worst Tours, a three-hour tour delivered by an architect turned tourguide (who had been forced into tourism by the financial crash and ongoing austerity), was a great introduction. Our guide spoke about the way in which Porto has developed over time and the politics of space and regeneration. A highlight was the architecture of Álvaro Siza, including the co-operative SAAL Bouça Housing designed after the Portuguese revolution.

Closer to home, Doncaster was bustling and lively but had a tough edge.

Loughborough was a pleasant industrial market town dominated by a huge post-war university campus (since expanded) – and a 1923 carillon on the skyline, which also serves as a war memorial. A collection of campus artworks contrasted with the sportiness of the students, and the high concentration of sports pitches.

Uppermill, on the edges of Oldham, with its swishly done-up Weavers Factory, had a spectacular landscape and views over Greater Manchester, but felt otherwise claustrophobically twee and bourgeois.

Walks

Waterlogged fields made for a muddy walk from Marple Bridge, on the outskirts of Stockport, to Mellor, on the edge of the Peak District. Tall terraces backed onto a loudly rushing river at pretty hamlet Mill Brow, and the ancient hill-top church of St Thomas, next to the site of an archaeological dig and a reconstructed roundhouse, contrasted with the views over the tower blocks of Stockport and Manchester’s modern-day glass high-rises.

At Upnor in Kent, the River Medway left a muddy beach of oyster shells, pottery, bricks and glass, with chalet communities on the banks. An estuarine fort and rows of houseboats made for a picturesque walk towards Sheerness bridge in the distance.

Swims

Sandford Park Lido, a long pool surrounded by lawns in the extremely posh Cotswolds town of Cheltenham, was heaving on one of the hottest days of the year. The pool has consistently well-used since the 1930s and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. It’s adapted well to the times, though, serving vegan burgers and ice cream.

Cirencester’s Victorian Open Air Swimming Pool, by contrast, was far less busy and more relaxed. Run by volunteers, and featuring a book and swimwear swap, it had a community feel and was heated to the perfect temperature. Down a lane alongside a half-dried up river, and overlooked by a castle surrounded by medieval streets, this has got to be one of the most scenic settings for a swim in Britain.

I was extremely disappointed to find Álvaro Siza’s Tidal pools of Leça da Palmeira, on the coast outside Porto, shut for refurbishment, as big waves crashed over the rocks of Porto’s cold, windy, misty beaches. Luckily, another sixties pool by Siza, the tranquil Piscina da Quinta da Conceição, provided a more sheltered spot, set in parkland with grassed sun terraces and polished wood changing rooms.

Art

Penny Woolcock’s film-based exhibition ‘Fantastic Cities’ at Modern Art Oxford brought together a plurality of viewpoints exploring how our experiences of cities and how we behave in them are affected by identities such as gender, class and race.

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy’s ‘Genetic Automata’ at Arts Catalyst in London was an engaging film installation challenging our ideas of race, heritage and identity through a collage of popular cultural imagery (from videogames and emojis to Darwin’s taxidermy collection), with an alternative music soundtrack.

‘But what if we tried?’ at Touchstones in Rochdale was an illuminating experiment to display as much of the town’s 1,500-strong art collection at once as possible (there’s only space to show about 300 pieces), exploring the curatorial and logistical processes behind the scenes of programming a gallery, the legacies and ongoing acquisitions which shape collections, politics of funding and ownership, and the challenges and responsibilities of conservation and care.

‘Still I Rise (Act 2)’ at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill was an immersive and all-encompassing survey of feminism and culture which ranged across activism, representation, sexuality, urbanism, spirituality, new models for living, working and organising and much, much more.

The Festival of Making and ‘Art in Manufacturing’ programme brought together art, science and industry in Blackburn. Dan Edwards' series of street signs ‘We Can Do More’, displayed around the town, were reminders and prompts to act, subverting a workers’ instruction manual and street signage. Amy Pennington’s ‘Return to Sender’ project, working with an envelope factory, asked local people to send responses to questions about their working practices, and Daksha Patel’s ‘Connecting Yarn’, looked at the UK and worldwide destinations of yarn dyed in Blackburn. The highlight, though, was Liz Wilson’s repetitive, hypnotic video and sound installation ‘The Optical Mechanical’, which gradually built up an ensemble of found sounds and images resembling minimalist classical music.

Nika Neelova’s ‘EVER’ took place across the former brewery offices of the Tetley in Leeds, reimagining the building’s gallery spaces through a series of sculptural interventions exploring and subverting the materiality of its interiors.

Laurie Anderson’s virtual reality experience ‘To the Moon’, at the Royal Exchange in Manchester was a rare opportunity to fly and explore space in the body of an astronaut. Her dreamy yet subtly political installation suggested that stars are the one thing man can’t harvest or destroy.

Frances Disley’s participatory solo show ‘The Cucumber Fell in the Sand’ at Humber Street Gallery in Hull asked us to slow down and focus on our experience, whilst thinking about approaches to care and growing, and how we look after ourselves and others.

'Instituting Care', Jade Montserrat’s huge wall drawings and installation/reading room/library at the Bluecoat in Liverpool (which then toured to Humber Street) explored ideas of education and care, both through institutions and alternative models and ways of thinking.

There was lots to look at and think about in ‘Future Cities’ at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, but the highlight was Laurence Lek’s time- and city-travelling video work Pyramid Schemes, which explored architecture as sign, symbol, fantasy and spectacle, and its cultural and physical meanings and impact.

I was excited to visit Radar at Loughborough University, whose research-led visual arts programme I have long admired. 'This Was Just What I Saw' was the result of a collaboration between Human Geography lecturer Dr Sarah Mills and artist Katarina Hruskova, inspired by the art teaching methods of Marion Richardson, an interwar educationalist associated with child art, who worked to develop children’s powers of self-expression and ‘inner eye’ using the power of memory, description and observation. Mills and Hruskova worked with Richardson’s archive, and children in present-day Midlands schools, to reanimate and reimagine Richardson’s methods.

The British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent explored the legacy and heritage of clay in the area, and its international connections, pushing the boundaries of what ceramics are and the form they take, raising issues round authenticity, copies and their relation to the original. Highlights included Terms & Conditions at Airspace and Victoria Lindo and William Brookes’ pots at Spode Works, where a tragic story lurked beneath the beauty of ornately worked surfaces.

Elizabeth Price’s ‘A Long Memory’ at the Whitworth in Manchester was full of bizarre and bewildering juxtapositions and references to memory, culture, language, technology and change: in her films, it’s not always clear what’s real and what’s fiction. The highlight was At the House of Mr X, an increasingly surreal tour around a modernist house which offered an alternative perspective on value, lingering on seemingly banal details about the materials of the house, its decor and contents.

‘Banner Culture’ at Brierfield Mill, part of the British Textiles Biennial, brought together the most banners I’ve ever seen in one place: the variety of media and techniques used, and political causes and makers, from professionals to collaborative and community-based projects, was astonishing.

Amalia Pica’s solo show ‘Private & Confidential’ at the New Art Gallery in Walsall subverted bureaucratic motifs of officialdom and attempted to find joy in the paper trails of institutional correspondence she had to navigate when going through the process of obtaining British citizenship.

I found Katie Paterson’s transmissions across time, space and distance, and explorations of our planet and others, at Turner Contemporary in Margate, whimsical but quite engrossing.

Also at the Turner Contemporary, Lawrence Abu Hamdan's films were the highlight of this year's (extremely serious) Turner Prize. The standout was After SFX, an alternative dictionary of sounds with connotations of torture, compiled through interviews with former inmates of Syria's Sednyaya Prison, which showed how our sensory perceptions rely on our prior knowledge and experiences to explain and make sense of the indescribable.

Film

‘The Favourite’ had absolutely fantastic performances from all three leads and made you wonder who was manipulating whom.

It was a great year for British film: Carol Morley’s ‘Out of Blue’ was a modern-day noir and detective story set in New Orleans. Featuring an astonishing performance from Patricia Clarkson, and playing with masks and appearances, you didn’t know what to believe and it made you question the extent to which you can ever really know someone.

Both humorous and sad, ‘Bait’ looked and sounded beautiful. Though sometimes straying close to parody and stereotype, the tension rose perfectly in this tale of conflict between locals of a Cornish fishing village and second home-owners.

‘Ray and Liz’ was a social realist drama with a surrealist, dreamy twinge, like Terence Davies meets Andrea Arnold. Flitting backwards and forwards in time between a terrace and tower block, it was a portrait of Richard Billingham’s childhood – and of neglect – as much as of his parents.

‘The Souvenir’, Joanna Hogg’s Jarmonesque story about the lives of Sloaney upper classes was her best film yet, and one whose characters – including fantastic mother-daughter performers by Tilda Swinton and Honor Byrne Swinton – and their stories stayed in your mind long afterwards.

Elsewhere, Claire Denis’ first English-language film, the melancholy ‘High Life’, featured a confusingly twisted and often disturbing sci-fi plot and a characteristically atmospheric score by Stuart A Staples.

‘Capernaum’ was a tender, heartbreaking Lebanese film exploring ideas of family, care, nurture, choice and responsibility, and based on the premise of a boy (who was old before his time) suing his family for being born and for child neglect.

‘The Chambermaid’ explored frustrated ambition, claustrophobia, class, exploitation and stoicism, all within the confines of a luxury hotel in Mexico City.

‘Book Smart’ was improbable but hilarious. ‘Woman At War’ was a subtly funny, surreal Icelandic comedy in which the landscape and the weather was ultimately the star.

‘Pain and Glory’ was muted by Almodóvar's standards, and surprisingly moving, telling a story of creative inspiration, ageing and loss.

‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ was beautifully shot with a lush score and contemplative voiceover. Combining the personal with the institutional, a love story was intertwined with the sound and colour of a sultry New York summer.

I enjoyed 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood' and 'The Irishman' for their soundtracks and period styling as much as for their plots (and Brad Pitt and Leonardo di Caprio's on screen chemistry in 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood').

‘Bridges of Time’ brought together new and historic documentary film showing everyday life in the Baltic states behind the Iron Curtain, from children dancing, singing and at school, to seal-hunting, fishing and forestry, to the uniformity of Soviet apartment blocks, surveyed from above. Dating from the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s, elderly film-makers and their subjects were brought together with extremely moving results.

‘Island of Hungry Ghosts’ had a strong sense of place, exploring the migration of crabs and humans on Australia's Christmas Island.

‘Being Frank’, the Frank Sidebottom documentary, was both hilarious and tragic. It told a very personal story – encompassing the dual personas of Frank Sidebottom and Chris Sievey – and presented a picture of thwarted ambition and unbridled creativity across music, comedy, art and even computer programming.

‘Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records’ was not just the story of Trojan records but an exploration of migration, identity, cultures, relationships and social change.

‘Stories from the She Punks’ discussed how and why women got into bands and learned to play, arguing that it gave often shy young women a voice, something to say and the means to say it.

TV

‘Black Mirror’ continued its preoccupation with technology. The British-set episodes were the highlights: Striking Vipers, which explored the implications of pornography and the boundaries between the real and the virtual worlds and Smithereens, with its screen-mediated lives, couldn't have been more topical.

Jeremy’s Deller’s documentary ‘Everybody in the Place’ provided a social, material, political, cultural and musical history of rave culture – and the 1980s. Presented in the form of a sixth form history lesson, it mercifully avoided the usual staid talking heads.

Michael Apted’s ‘Up’ series made a welcome return to the TV. Now aged 63, the participants’ relationship with Apted had become as central as the initial themes of class and work. The programme was given an added poignancy through the participants’ experiences of ageing and loss, and a topicality through attitudes to Brexit.

Theatre

‘Tao of Glass’ was an incredibly funny and moving one-man monologue from Phelim McDermott offering a deeply personal reflection on art, creativity and inspiration. McDermott took us on a journey from his teenage years in Blackley, north Manchester, listening to Philip Glass records and dreaming of being on stage at the Royal Exchange to moving to New York and producing Philip Glass operas. Visually and musically gorgeous, combining paper, music and puppetry, 'Tao of Glass' felt genuinely international and collaborative. When Philip Glass himself appeared on stage at the end, hugging McDermott and holding hands, I wasn’t the only audience member moved to tears.

Books

‘From Rzycki, Michael Galeta, a 20th century life’ was an extremely moving tribute by Robert Galeta to his late father. It pieced together and tried to make sense of his life, firstly as a teenager taken from his family and village in Poland (now in the Ukraine) to a forced labour camp in Germany during the war, and passing through a series of camps in France and Italy, before settling and making a life in Bradford – from where Galeta and his father took journeys together and re-eencountered traces of the people and places his father had formerly known.

‘Present Tense’, published by Liverpool culture site the Double Negative, reflected on the legacy of the city as Capita of Culture, a decade on. One of the highlights was a Liverpool sculpture walk by Denise Courcoux, which made me want to go and hunt some of the sculptures down.

Finally, although Essex and its architecture and culture has been a place of renewed interest in recent years, thanks in large part to the efforts of Focal Point Gallery's Radical Essex programme, Gillian Darley's return to her home county for 'Excellent Essex' shed some light on some of the county's still lesser-known histories and figures.

Music

The most beautiful record of the year was Jessica Pratt’s aptly named 'Quiet Signs'. At times Tropicalia-esque, her guitar and voice were augmented by piano and flute, bringing to mind Hope Sandoval, 'Pink Moon'-era Nick Drake and even Erik Satie.

Mark Stewart’s distinctive voice rang out like a timely warning call on Jah Wobble’s A Very British Coup, also featuring Andrew Weatherall, Keith Levene and Richard Dudanski.

Kate Tempest’s Firesmoke was downbeat and vulnerable, but personal and ultimately affirmative electronica.

My discovery of the year was the Afrobeat/gospel/jazz of 'Where the Future Holds' by Chicago’s Black Monument Ensemble, the highlight being the catchy and urgent Sounds like Now.

David Berman made a welcome return with Purple Mountains’ droll country, particularly on the contradictorily upbeat All My Happiness Has Gone, before his untimely death.

Another welcome return was No Rock: Save in Roll, a new single in Cornershop’s classic style.

Elsewhere, Trash Kit went all jammy on Horizon, Pozi’s Engaged was nursery rhyme-esque grunge with a raw, simple violin line and Dogs by All Girls Arson Club had the ramshackle charm of Tallulah Gosh and alt-folk, and I can't get Liz Naylor (named after the iconic City Fun writer and friend of the band) by Barry out of my head.

Gigs

It was too busy to actually see Jessica Pratt during her gig at Manchester’s hippest new venue, Yes, but the minimal set up of her band – just her, a guitar and a Korg keyboardist, with an encore performed solo – allowed her voice and otherworldly melodies to shine through. The audience was rapt, appreciative and appeared to be intimately acquainted with her work.

Sauna Youth and Trash Kit played short but sweet 35-mintue sets at the White Hotel in Salford. At Yes, Trask Kit side project Sacred Paws expanded with a bassist and second guitarist, but it was best when it was just the two of them playing fast punk.

At the Bridgewater Hall, Mark Elder explained and contextualised the Hallé Orchestra’s performance of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony with a knowledge and enthusiasm that made you want to learn more.

The richness and dour beauty of Bill Callahan’s songs shone through at the Albert Hall in Manchester, during a stripped down set featuring a bowed and plucked double bass, bowed and plucked.

Jazz trio GoGo Penguin performed a live, post-rock-style soundtrack to 'Koyaanisqatsi' at the Royal Northern College of Music, keeping pace with the intensity of the film and its frenetic visuals.

The most fun gig of the year was the Broadcast-esque weird-pop of Stealing Sheep at Yes. Their psychedelic a capella, three-piece vocal harmonies and co-ordinated dance moves culminated in an inflatable sheep in the crowd. Wearing matching body-tight, glittery dresses, and sparkling faces and hair, they appeared to be delighted to be there. Dancier and more bassy live, they even incorporated a cover of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.

Finally, it was good to back on stage, performing with experimental poetry project Chelsea from Essex at Band on the Wall's free jazz showcase.

The Star and Garter: secret history of a nightclub

I can vividly remember the first time I went to a nightclub. I was 18, had recently moved to Manchester and followed the flow of freshers to 'indie' club 5th Avenue, where I had my bum pinched and objected to a lanky youth 'playfully' stealing the hat off my head: not the greatest introduction to going out at night. I can also remember the second time I went to a nightclub, because I went alone, unable to convince fellow students to walk five minutes down the road to the Star and Garter, in the bleak and unprepossessing red light district behind Piccadilly Station. I spent the rest of the evening talking to strangers, engaging in what I probably thought at the time were deep conversations about things like the influence of Albert Camus' The Outsider on 'Killing an Arab' by the Cure.

At the Star and Garter's flagship night Smile, billed as the longest-running indie night in Manchester, I realised for the first time that other people of my age liked the same kind of music as me – and what's more, that it was actually possible to dance to this kind of music (or in my case, shuffle awkwardly whilst staring at the floor and/or jump clumsily up and down to more energetic songs). As a club for people like me, who might not otherwise go out, it's been sad to see the venue gradually wind down Smile after the night celebrated its twentieth birthday last year, with the long-term future of the building looking uncertain. Proposals to add a platform to the east of Piccadilly Station as part of the Northern Hub scheme – construction is due to start in 2016 – would see trains pass window-rattlingly close to the already ramshackle Victorian building, leaving its future as a club unviable. Although several different proposals have been put forward for the distinctive triangular building's place in the development, from relocation (urban legend has it that the building was already moved once, in the mid-nineteenth century, although the council disputes this), to rebuilding, to extending the station around it, none seem feasible in the long-term. As current licensee and upstairs resident Andy Martin says: “You can't hide us behind a station and expect to have passing trade. It will either fall down or be out of business within a year of the platform opening – and if it closes Wetherspoon or another chain will take it over (although no big business in their right mind would).”

Andy, a former computer game reviewer, grew up under the influence of bands like the Smiths in Blackley, on the northern fringes of the city, surrounded by his siblings' record collections. Like mine, his first memories of Smile conjure the joy that comes from realising that there are other people who feel the same way as you about the songs that have soundtracked your life. “There was a circle of us all jumping up and down to 'Teenage Kicks',” he reminisces. “I'd never had that in a club before – a load of people who didn't know each other just loving a song. We all shook hands at the end. It was very polite.” However, he also admits that, like any other club, its basic function is the same: “It's a meat market. You go out and notice people and the guys wear cheap aftershave.” He observes that the traditional pub layout of the Star and Garter, with seating downstairs and a function room upstairs, helps facilitate this: “A massive USP is the club being on two floors. You can go upstairs in a darkened room and dance around and come downstairs with whoever you've pulled and realise you've made a massive mistake and go upstairs again.” The only difference to other clubs is the clientele. “We attract intelligent people here,” says Andy. “People who are now GPs, archaeologists, psychologists and who work for the CPS. I've helped every single one of them into a taxi. Thick people stick out here like a sore thumb.”

Andy's involvement with the Star and Garter initially came about through another cult band, Nigel Blackwell's Half Man Half Biscuit, following a gig at long-departed Manchester venue the Boardwalk in 1996, where he got talking to the band's manager, a “cantankerous old Scouser” selling t-shirts. To cut a long story short, Andy “fluked it with Half Man Half Biscuit” and ended up putting the band on the following year. A friend had heard good things about the Star and Garter, which could be hired out for £50, and the gig attracted a gaggle of “forty-something-year-old men forming mosh pits”.

Andy later started working behind the bar and, when the Star and Garter's owner started looking for someone else to run the pub, Andy and sound engineer Dermot O'Dea took it over. Andy made a few changes such as extending the opening hours of Smile, replacing skittering vinyl with CDs, employing long-running DJ Andy Woods and hosting one-offs such as album launches; previously, says Andy, “every night was like a Manic Street Preachers fan night – City Life said it was like gatecrashing a house party, just playing songs to mates”. Then followed the “halcyon days” of Smile, when the NME made it club of the week, there were queues around the block by 9.30pm and the club got so crowded that Andy had to operate a one-in-one-out policy. “Our USP has always been that we're off the beaten track,” says Andy. “There's no passing trade so it's an effort to make it. You have to know what you are going for and what night is on. You don't go for the massive selection of craft ales at the bar or the cocktail list – you go because you like the Smiths or the band playing.”

However, the Star and Garter has always been far more than just Smile. It's had its own line in nights dedicated solely to one artist – from the Belle and Sebastian disco started by Roxanne, who later moved to Glasgow and now plays in Veronica Falls, to evenings dedicated to Depeche Mode and Pixies. Most famous is the Smiths night, which has now been going for twenty years and attracts everyone from teens to hardcore fans in their sixties.

The Star and Garter has also been a place for unsigned bands to get onto lineups with more established punk and metal bands. It's been a stepping stone, too, for several bands who now sell out far bigger venues, from hosting Low twice in the 1990s – where everyone sat down – to Jeffrey Lewis. Even Status Quo played there in 1999, after the venue was shortlisted for their Under the Influence tour. “It was the most surreal experience of my life,” recalls Andy. “150 people dancing to the Quo – it was like something out of a Michael Jackson video. And I had to record United versus Juventus for Parfitt and Rossi while they played.” A similarly surreal experience was heavy rock band ArnoCorps' 2012 gig, where 150 fans arrived dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger. “It was like really good Smile party – everyone happy,” remembers Andy.

The Star and Garter has also acted as a showcase for local musicians and comedians, including at an open mic run by Akoustik Anarkhy which was attended by Manchester luminaries such as Badly Drawn Boy, the Longcut and Nine Black Alps. Andy remembers it as “glorified karaoke without the words on the screen and just mates doing cover versions on guitar” – including Andy's own renditions of Half Man Half Biscuit songs. Another night, Anti-Hoot, played host to unknown comics as well as fondly-remembered Bolton poet Hovis Presley. A poster paying tribute to Presley, who died prematurely in 2005, now hangs on the wall, featuring excepts from his wryly romantic poem 'I Rely On You', which pops up as a reading in local wedding services.


Pre-social media, the Star and Garter also functioned as a meeting place for unlikely special interest groups, from holding Anti-Nazi League meetings in the 1980s, to accommodating the 30-strong West Bromwich Albion supporters' club of Manchester, to hosting a PSV and HGV drivers' club which “used to show slides of 1950s buses to a ripple of applause”. With its haunted house looks, the Star and Garter must have provided a particularly fitting venue for the Vampire Society, whose members sat and read excerpts of Dracula. Most recently, the venue hosted Smiler, a spin-off group from the Rod Stewart fan club, with special guest Don Stewart (brother of Rod) making an appearance. And he's not the only person with a claim to fame to have visited. Andy has a special Smile poster signed by Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks as well as members of Half Man Half Biscuit, TV stars and, most obscurely, people who made music for vintage computer games.

The Star and Garter has also itself been a screen star. Although it's purported, probably incorrectly, to have featured in Manchester film noir classic Hell is A City, it has definitely appeared in Cracker and the Body Farm as well providing as the locale for a John Simm fight scene in Prey and a murder in Prime Suspect. Unfortunately, though, its seedy location could well be the Star and Garter's downfall. Big plans have been proposed for decades for this area, hemmed in by a train station, a taxi rank, a major bus route into the city and a collection of forbidding, slime-ridden railway viaducts, from the Whitehall of the North to an inter-city hub at derelict Mayfield station to an urban park. None have yet materialised, although Andy says, “there's nothing wrong with the area other than that it's never been invested in”. The Grade II listed status of the building, too, doesn't help, with the building suffering from damp and work needed on the roof yet no grants for like-for-like building work forthcoming. But it's part of the fabric of the area, and Andy's picked up snippets of information about its history and former inhabitants over the years, from its first licensee, a Miss Wetherspoon, to being a hotel with its own living quarters and dumb waiter, to housing a brewery and, later, a “trainee MASH type place for the home guard during the war”.

The Star and Garter's recent decline has coincided with the ascendancy of other areas of the city such as the Northern Quarter. Part of the problem, says Andy, is that Smile's audience has grown up – and “the new generation suddenly got hit by a massive choice of places to go, so Smile became a fallback”. Andy explains: “When we first started there was the Night & Day, us and the Roadhouse – we were the small venues. Then the council threw a load of money at the Northern Quarter and every Tom, Dick and Harry started opening a bar. It was even mentioned on the news.”

In the meantime, as both the Northern Hub and, further down the line, HS2 loom over its future, the Star and Garter soldiers on, continuing to host regular "cheap and cheerful" punk gigs. Alternative karaoke night Guts for Garters is proving popular, along with new music showcase and indie-pop disco Light it Up (Saturday May 10), '90s nights A Different Class and This is Uncool, queer party Bollox (Friday April 18) and guilty pleasures rock night Party Hard (Saturday May 3). Other upcoming events include a fundraiser by online Morrissey fanclub the Mozarmy (Saturday April 26), with special guests including Hayley from Coronation Street. It's also hoped that Smile can be resurrected for doorman Ian's 70th birthday in June.

As Andy says, the Star and Garter might not be renowned for its cocktail list or craft beer, but as the city gains in sophistication it's all too easy to lose out on opportunities for genuinely life-affirming communal music experiences. What we lose if we lose the Star and Garter is the bread and butter of Manchester's night life, the type of place where you can go just for the sheer joy of the music and any pretensions to post-industrial glamour or the array of drinks behind the bar are only a secondary concern.

Interview with Castles Built in Sand, directors of Helpyourself Manchester (screening at Victoria Baths on Sunday May 5)

Helpyourself Manchester, a recent film telling the story of Manchester’s unsung DIY music promoters, will be screening at this year's Victoria Baths Fanzine Fair (Sunday May 5), accompanied by an exhibition of original fliers from gigs featured in the film. The documentary focuses on a group of friends who found new and creative means of organising and promoting gigs in the mid- to late years of the previous decade, featuring bands such as Burnst, Cat on Form, the Enablers and McWat. From living rooms to basements, the promoters shown in the film put exciting and unheard bands on not for financial reward, but because they loved the music. The film, which makes uses of animation, photography, interviews and archive footage in a cut-and-paste style appropriate to the subject matter, is the work of Castles Built in Sand, a Manchester-based documentary film collective working on a DIY, not-for-profit and copyleft basis. The Shrieking Violet spoke to Castles Built in Sand to find out more about how they formed as a group and their collaborative approach to film-making.

SV: Tell me a bit about Castles Built in Sand – who are you and how did you come together as a collective? 

CBIS: We are a group of visual anthropologists, artists and musicians. Paddy, Huw, Insa, Yas and Birgitta met through their studies (some of us did an MA of Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester). Simon joined us later.

SV: Why did you decide to start a film-making collective? 

CBIS: After our graduation we all wanted to continue making films and to improve our skills. That's why we decided to start working together as a collective – to share skills, equipment and to motivate each other.

SV: You've also collaborated with some of the participants in your films. What do you gain from working collaboratively, both within the collective and with other groups of people such as interviewees, that you don't get working alone? 

CBIS: Working collaboratively allows us to gain different perspectives on the topics we are working on. It also ensures that everyone feels engaged and represented. This is especially important for us in regards to the people we are working with. We want to ensure they feel like they had a say and are portrayed in a way that leaves them empowered. Filmmaking for us is a mutual process, a give and take and learning from each other.

SV: How does the filmmaking process work – how do you set the theme and direction of where your projects are going? Is every project a joint project, or are there some films where certain people take the lead based on their interests or choose to adopt a lesser role?

CBIS: If we work on a project together there is a lot of discussion involved. We are never quite sure what exactly a project will end up as, because of the collaborative approach, everyone has an input which means a project can change quite a bit in the process of making. For our next project we are going to define our roles a bit more, which will be an interesting new approach for us.

However, we are also not always all working together on a project. Sometimes some of us decide not to be engaged in a project due to time constraints or varying interests or because it doesn't make sense to have too many people involved.

SV: How do you choose your subjects? Is there anything that ties all your projects together, either thematically or in the approach taken to filmmaking? 

CBIS: Our projects are not necessary linked in any way, we choose them according to what we are interested in or think is an important topic to portray.

SV: How did Helpyourself Manchester come about? What's your involvement with that scene, why did the film need to be made and why make the film now – in retrospect? 

CBIS: The idea to make a film about Helpyourself Manchester and this part of Manchester's DIY scene came out of conversations Paddy had with Lee, one of our friends who was involved with Helpyourself Manchester. Huw was around for the last few gigs, whereas Insa and Paddy came to Manchester in 2009, a few years after Helpyourself. We wanted to look at the way people had used space in Manchester to organise culture outside of the mainstream. With all the government cuts and the current debates about gentrification it seemed like a topic that is actually quite timeless and important to discuss.

SV: How did you go about making the film and how long did it take? 

CBIS: From start to finish it took us about one and a half years to complete the film. We collected material on the way, interviewed our friends and tried to get as much info as possible. Then we edited separate sequences which we thought should be in the film and which we joined up eventually. Once we had a first watchable version of the fllm (which at the time was about two hours long) we showed it to the people who we had filmed and to friends who hadn't heard about Helpyourself Manchester before. These sessions provided us with a lot of different opinions as to what would work and what wouldn't and suggestions for changes. In the end we cut the film down to 54 minutes.

SV: Your projects seem to have a political dimension running through them to do with power, voice and representation. Do you consciously try to make films from that perspective?

CBIS: It's less a conscious choice to make films which might be considered political, but it rather comes out of our interests and ways of looking at the things going on around us. So it happens naturally rather than us trying to provide a political stance.

SV: Whether focusing on DIY promoters, the residents of a temporary care home, protestors or young people affected by cuts to education, your films quite often depict the type of subjects and people that might not normally have a film made about them. What do the subjects get out of being part of the filmmaking process – and what do we get out of it as viewers? 

CBIS: It is important to show what wouldn't be shown otherwise and to make people conscious of what is going on around them. Film, photography and sound are powerful tools which offer people outside the media focus a way to express themselves. The collaborative way in which we are working hopefully leaves the people we are working with with a feeling of actually having had a possibility to say what they wanted to say.

SV: You've collaborated with bands like Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra and Tubers in the past; can you explain the importance of sound in your work?

CBIS: Sound lets us see things differently. When the sound is good, the images seem more powerful and engaging.

SV: There is also a really strong sense of place in your films. How would you describe your approach to representing and describing place? 

CBIS: We try to engage with the place or space we portray – you could almost say we let it speak to us. Using different media is very important for this approach. We don't confine ourselves to one medium but use whatever medium we think best conveys a sense of the place. That's where sound is also very important – if we listen we discover different aspects of what contributes to our notion of a place.

SV: Your webpage has quite a few texts as well as films, which seem to stand together – what is the relationship between the texts and the films, and do you find it to be a useful process to write about the processes of making and conceiving films?

CBIS: What we tend to forget is that each medium has its own qualities and its own place in the context of representing a topic. We try to use different methods and media depending on their usefulness to portray a topic as complete and from as many perspectives as possible. Film can't express or explain everything but it gives a good sense of place and people's personalities. Sound lets us experience place from another standpoint. And texts can help us putting everything into a greater context or to deconstruct the images we present. It is important to question different methods of representation and using mixed media allows us to bear the construction of these representations in mind.

SV: What are you working on at the moment and what are you planning to do next? 

CBIS: We have just started working on a trailer for our next project, which will be an apocalyptic photo essay film. This should keep us busy for a while.

SV: Where can people see your work? 

CBIS: We have a blog which we update as regularly as possible. There you can also find a list of upcoming screenings, the next one being Helpyourself Manchester at Victoria Baths on 5 May, as part of the Victoria Baths Fanzine Fair (12-14pm).

Helpyourself Manchester trailer:

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Things I enjoyed in 2012

Music 

Big Star Third, Barbican, London 

Big Star are my favourite ever band, and I have my dad to thank for getting me into them when I was a teenager. Whilst I love individual songs on #1 Record and Radio City, for me their final album Third/Sister Lovers works best as a complete piece of work, with its surprise mix of rocking pop songs, strange, otherworldly clanging and heart wrenching string and horn arrangements – it's one of those records I used to spend hours listening to in the dark trying to work out how the arrangements fitted together and how all the sounds the record were achieved. In 2008, my dad offered to take me to see their singer, Alex Chilton, at Shepherd's Bush Empire, but I decided to move house that weekend instead. I came to regret this a lot, as Chilton died a year and a half later at the age of 59, of a heart attack, so I never got to see him. When I heard about an event at the Barbican with a guest cast of musicians playing Big Star's third album in its entirety with the original string and horn arrangements, a few weeks after my dad's 50th birthday, therefore, it seemed like the perfect present. We decided to make a day of it in London, but my dad was in an unbelievably grumpy mood and barely spoke to me all day, and I was worried the gig wasn't going to interest him either. I've never seen someone perk up so suddenly, though. The revolving cast of musicians from bands like REM, Yo La Tengo and Teenage Fanclub really worked (with the exception of John Bramwell from I Am Kloot, whose nasal whining was completely out of place) and my dad was on the edge of his seat throughout the gig, smiling broadly – not least when Ray Davies was brought out as a surprise guest to rock the stage at the end. The Barbican concert hall is beautiful too – all wooden inside with really clear acoustics.

Chain and the Gang, Kraak Gallery, Manchester

I went to this gig as all girl punk band Trash Kit, one of my favourite bands of recent years, were on the bill, not knowing anything about headline band Chain and the Gang. In between bands, my friend excitably said 'There's Ian Svenonius, shall we go and have our photo taken with him?', to which I replied 'Who's that?'. Turns out Chain and the Gang singer Ian Svenius is a bit of an indie hero, having played in several cult bands over the years. It suddenly made sense why the audience was noticeably older than the usual crowd at this type of gig, and John Robb jumped up on stage to introduce them (possibly the only time I have ever been at the same gig as John Robb). Whilst Chain and the Gang are indisputably punk rock, their music is classy, stylish, musically slick and, most of all, fun, with front man Svenonius and front woman Katie Alice Greer dancing around the stage and playing off one other. 

Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield , Academy 2, Manchester

No surprises here – Dando and Hatfield duetted on classic Lemonheads tracks and took it in turn to play their own songs – except I'd never realised what a strong singer, guitarist and songwriter Hatfield is in her own right.

Trust Fund/Two White Cranes, my garden, Manchester

The last gig I'll ever have in my canal-side garden (I'm moving house soon) was a good one: Roxy Brennan, formerly of the Mountain Parade, writes sweet, simple folk songs as Two White Cranes, whilst Ellis Jones, formerly of the Bumblebees, sings falsetto over a Casio keyboard and sparse guitar under the name Trust Fund.

Dan Deacon, Islington Mill, Salford 

I maintain that Dan Deacon provides the most fun you can have at a gig – including dance-offs, a strobe light app for iPhones and making the audience create a tunnel with their hands then run through it to come out outside the building and then do the same again to go back inside. The music – euphoric dance – isn't bad either.

ATP, Minehead

I admit the appeal of ATP isn't really about the music – watching bands is always going to come second to wandering around charity shops, and exploring up and down hills and along the beaches in Minehead itself, interspersed with trips to Butlins' cinema and wave pool, but it was also great to see Minutemen, Young Marble Giants and Apples in Stereo, who were as fun as I'd hoped they would be. 

Wake Up Dead, Wim Wams, Irma Vep, the Hipshakes, Hotspur House, Manchester 

Top floor punk party with a view over the rooftops and train tracks of Manchester, in one of my favourite spaces in the city.

Honourable mentions go also to Francois and the Atlas Mountains, Rozi Plain and Being There, all at the Castle in Manchester.

Art 

Jane and Louise Wilson, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 

The best exhibition I've seen in Manchester in a while, Jane and Louise Wilson's photos, videos and sculptural installations show both the human and environmental impact of the Chernobyl disaster (and, elsewhere in the exhibition, recreate the scene of the murder of a Dubai businessman), in an exhibition that exposes the limits of human planning, surveillance and control. Read my review of the exhibition for Corridor8 here.

Martin Creed, All the Bells

Martin Creed's Work No 1197, a mass artwork which involved trying to get all the bells in the country to ring as loudly and quickly as possible for three minutes as a wake-up call heralding the start of the Olympics, was definitely the event I was most looking forward to during the Olympic year – although I found it frustratingly hard to find other people who shared my enthusiasm for getting up at 8.12am to make a noise. Other towns, villages and cities had organised All the Bells events; Manchester had none, and I had visions of being reduced to standing outside ringing my doorbell by myself for three minutes. However, I borrowed an agogô bell from the samba band I play with just in case, and at the last minute joined up with Alison Kershaw to ring some bells at St Luke's art project in the Longsight suburb of Manchester. St Luke's is based in a modern church on busy Stockport Road – one of the main roads into Manchester – and, it turns out, the church does not have physical bells but uses old cassette recordings of peals which are blasted out ahead of services and events. Calls to worship are on one side of the tape, weddings and funerals on the other; the church would be stuck if it lost the tape, said Alison! Alison had downloaded the special ringtone Martin Creed had created for the event (I couldn't, as it was only available for smartphones), and we stood, smiles on faces, banging away outside the church, church bells ringing in the background, as local residents came to their doors and windows in bewilderment. Admittedly, these were the only bells we we heard in Manchester, and some wags started the Twitter hashtag '#noneofthebells'.

Mark Leckey, Manchester Art Gallery

For this show, Leckey faced off a huge speaker stack against a giant, metallic piece of industrial machinery formerly used in a factory. On the opening night, Leckey's DJing made the room reverberate with sheer, bone-shaking noise, contrasting with the monumental solemnity of the two pieces of redundant equipment during usual exhibition hours, facing each other in silence, and the frantic activity of his youth culture film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore.

Victoria Lucas, Untitled Gallery, Manchester

The best use of birds in an art gallery since Birds on Guitars (the Barbican, 2010), this simple yet lovely installation transformed tiny Untitled Gallery into an aviary by projecting a film of the gallery, temporarily populated by small, brightly coloured birds, onto the back wall, placing the viewer in a mirror image of the space. Watching the birds fly around the room was strangely captivating in itself, but what really made the film was the accidental presence of a strange figure (supposedly a bird expert) wandering in and out of the frame, failing over and over again to catch the birds with his hands and line them up on a low wire strung across the gallery.

Seven Sites, various locations, Manchester/Salford

Laura Mansfield and Swen Steinhauser's series of artistic interventions into everyday sites across the two cities, from a church to a curry house.

Hans Haacke, Reina Sofia, Madrid 

Fun but thought-provoking installations that make you look again at the art world and art's relationship with power, money and prestige.

Tracy Emin, Turner Contemporary, Margate 

I went to this exhibition expecting to be underwhelmed, but found Emin's personal, confessional drawings on the subject of sex, and her self-portraits, moving and affecting. It's rarely that I feel I can relate to a feminine topic, writer or artist just on the basis that I am a woman and am therefore supposed to have some kind of shared, woman-specific outlook on life, but I did feel a connection with Emin's work and experiences. She may not be the most subtle of artists, but I also thought her tapestries were really quite beautiful. We were there on the opening weekend, when the artist herself was wondering the building amid the crowds gathered to see this solo show in her home-town.

Michael Dean, Henry Moore Institute Leeds

One of several exhibitions I saw in Leeds in 2012, and Henry Moore Institute is another small gallery whose exhibitions always impress. Michael Dean fundamentally transformed the visitor experience, from creating sculptural door handles to carpeting the gallery's floor spaces, placing gallery assistants on the floor and filling the space with huge, tactile objects, some of which were so large they had to be made in situ.

The Humble Market, FACT, Liverpool

Part of Abandon Normal Devices festival, Brazilian/UK theatre collective Zecora Ura led viewers on a group tour through several scenarios, forcing the viewer to reevaulate their relationship to the artworks, as well their relationship with other members of the audience.

I've also really enjoyed all the exhibitions I've seen at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, which I feel really punches above its size. The venues impressed more than much of the art at Liverpool Biennial this year – with the exception of John Akomfrah's video installation The Unfinished Conversation at the Bluecoat, which refracted memories through snippets of archive film to explore the ideas and life of Stuart Hall. In a rare (at least in my experience) occurrence for a gallery, members of the public sat still for forty odd minutes to watch the film in its entirety instead of hovering uncertainly at the back or wandering in and out. In Manchester, I enjoyed small solo shows by Daniel Fogarty and Mary Griffiths at Bureau Gallery.

Books 

Whilst neither of these books were published in 2012 (or, indeed, recently), they are both among the best books I have ever read and had me engrossed during 2012.

Waterlog, Roger Deakin 

The type of book you wish you could carry with you all the time for inspiration, guidance and a bit of comfort on bad days, Deakin uses a uniquely beautiful turn of words as he swims his way around the country's waterways, evoking the sense of freedom, excitement and spontaneity that swimming al fresco brings.

Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azzerad

I wish I'd read this book, about the bands, record labels and publications that spread the DIY spirit across America, ten years ago: it should be compulsory reading for anyone with ambitions for forming a band, putting gigs on or releasing records (skip the Mudhoney chapter, but the Minor Threat, Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Beat Happening chapters are particularly inspiring amidst the fights, drugs and decadence).

Film 

Lawrence of Belgravia 

One of the most honest and least contrived 'rockumentaries' I've ever seen, Lawrence of Belgravia follows Felt/Go-Kart Mozart frontman Lawrence over a period of years in a warts and all, fly on the wall journey into the life of a pop star. Sometimes frustrating but mainly just heartwarming, the film makes you cross your fingers for Lawrence to get his big break, snag Kate Moss, and become an indie superstar. If anyone deserves it, he does.

Make Your Own Damn Art 

A documentary following the life and work of artist Bob and Roberta Smith. I found Smith's ethos, attitude and approach to making art refreshing and inspiring. From creating a gallery in his garden shed (anyone can make a gallery, he suggests) to selling affordable artworks at art car boot fairs and playing in a middle aged punk rock band, if Smith had a manifesto it would be 'Make your own damn art: don't expect me to make it for you', something which resonates with the Shrieking Violet. It's an important message for anyone who's ever wanted to make an artwork, a piece of music or even a zine but not known where to begin, so never quite got round to it.

Utopia London 

Utopia London pays homage to twentieth century town planning and the city in which its director, Tom Cordell, grew up. Comprising interviews with some of the key architects in the rebuilding of a city left ravaged by the Second World War, the film shows the ideals and aspirations of those behind the Modernist movement, demonstrating how they aimed to build a better, more equal world by fusing design with artistic and scientific innovation. Many of the architects are now in their eighties, yet still full of spirit and idealism, and some of the film's most moving movements are when they are taken back to the sites of their buildings to see how they fared. Utopia London is thought-provoking, inspiring and uplifting: a must-see for anyone who has ever looked around and wondered: how did our towns and cities get to be the way they are?

Bata-ville: we are not afraid of the future

On the list of things I want to achieve before I die is making a documentary film. Bata-ville, in which a coach full of (mostly elderly) former employees of paternalistic shoe company Bata is taken by two lively artists on a pilgrimage from Bata's now defunct factory in East Tilbury to the company's Moravian hometown, is surreal, funny and subversive in its attitude towards history and the meaning of memories. Bata-ville is the type of film I would love to be able to call my own.

Swandown

Whilst I find Iain Sinclair's writing difficult to read, he made for good entertainment in this travelogue with a difference. Swandown follows Sinclair and Andrew Kötting (director of the wonderful, poignant coastal odyssey Gallivant) on an unlikely, intrepid adventure by swan pedalo, which begins with the pair bobbing up and down on the sea off Hastings and culminates inland in the waterways of London, with plenty of laughs along the way as well as opportunities for reflection.

Nostalgia for the Light

Beautifully filmed and soundtracked yet devastatingly sad documentary which intertwines the wonders of Chile's observatory centre in the Atacama desert with the search by groups of women for the remains of loved ones missing, presumed dead, under the Pinochet regime. Nostalgia for the Light captures the grandeur, emptiness and openendedness of both the landscape and human existence, in which there sometimes are no answers, only mysteries.

TV 

I know he's a nasty man, but Michael Portillo is still my favourite TV present (his genial nature and colourful outfits make me smile), so I was pleased that the year started with another series of Great British Railway Journeys and ended with a new spin on the concept, Great Continental Railway Journeys, which saw the episodes extended into hour-long explorations of various European destinations.

Also worth a mention is the Jeremy Deller Culture Show special (for roughly the same reasons I enjoyed the Bob and Roberta Smith film).

Theatre

The Royal Exchange never disappoints, and the costumes and music are always particularly impressive. I saw a swinging production of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and a tense take on Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending there.

Radio 

2012 was the year in which I finally started listening to 99% Invisible's short podcasts on architecture, urbanism and design; recent highlights have included instalments on Buckminster Fuller, Kowloon Walled City and dazzle ships. As well as covering diverse subjects in a diverse, engaging way, Roman Mars has my favourite voice on the radio.