Doctoral researcher Lucy Power reports on the opening of an unusual exhibition devoted to a writer’s group in Chorlton, South Manchester…
Shhh! The Chorlton Writers’ Cafe Library Exhibition
There was a joyful atmosphere last Thursday evening at Chorlton Library, when members of the Chorlton Writers’ Cafe gathered to celebrate the launch of our first exhibition of creative writing in the main library space.
During the winter months, our team of Cafe volunteers had worked tirelessly to edit, format and design the exhibition, before mounting the writing on large panels throughout the library space. The show includes short excerpts from writers’ new work, page-length poems, and extracts from the Writers’ Cafe anthology, that we created in 2024.
In addition to the new writing, members had created a set of library book reviews to exhibit in the lending area, emphasising the creative relationship between our writers and the library’s collection. This part of the show gave Cafe writers the chance to hone their critical writing skills, producing a eclectic selection of short reviews of books, ranging from fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis and Rutherford’s translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, to Matt Goodfellow’s children’s book Final Year, and, of course, our own The Writers’ Table anthology.
When we started designing the show, the library manager, Sally Dadhwal, explained that the library was keen for exhibitions to showcase the newly-refurbished space – particularly the atrium area with its circular elevated walkway tracing the internal rim of the building’s Edwardian domed roof. However, we realised that this beautiful vertiginous balcony, with its narrow staircase and no lift, could not be reached by visitors with limited mobility, which created a quandary for our exhibition: how could we make sure that all of the writers’ work would be accessible, whilst also making use of the stunning atrium space?
To address the problem, we made a spoken word recording of the whole exhibition that can be accessed at the library’s audio booth. And the wonderful, unplanned consequence of creating a sonic version of the show is that we have also made our exhibition fully accessible for visually impaired library visitors.
The exhibition can be viewed during library opening times throughout February.
Chorlton Library, Manchester Road, Chorlton, M21 9PN