A much belated Happy New Year to our readers. As we enter the final stage of the Modern Backdrop, work is underway to design and curate our end of project exhibition which will open at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery in late Spring 2024. Earlier this month we invited members of the community to […]
Photography Exhibition at the Working Class Movement Library Opening Event 25th January 4-6pm Join us on Thursday, 25th of January 4-6pm at the Working Class Movement Library to open our exhibition In the Face of Dwelling. This exhibition combines portrait photographs of Salford working-class people with photos and architectural drawings that illustrate the types of […]
This week we have a guest post from Belinda Scarlett, Library Manager at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. Belinda writes about the Library’s involvement in The Modern Backdrop project and some of the archive material the Library holds. The Working Class Movement Library was founded in the 1950s by socialist historians, trade unionists […]
In Spring/Summer 2024 we will be holding our final project exhibition at Salford Museum and Art Gallery. To help us prepare to display the findings from the project and our research we are looking for people to bring their knowledge and memories of Salford to the curation process. This is an opportunity for you to […]
Since we started the Modern Backdrop project in April 2022, many of you have kindly shared with us your photographs of Salford ‘as it was’, showing terraced streets and housing before and during the demolition phase in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these images feature you or your family and friends and they give […]
We are fascinated by the lost tradition of ‘donkey stoning’ and want to find a donkey stone to exhibit in our final project exhibition in Spring 2024. ‘Donkey stoning’ was the process of applying a wetted ‘donkey stone’ to the surface of front door steps, window sills and flags to help clean and enhance their […]
The first episode of Coronation Street was shown on Friday, 9th December 1960. A year later, on December 2nd 1961 the Observer published the article “The endless Street…” marvelling over the extraordinary success of the soap opera. According to the website Corriepedia on average, each episode had drawn more than 13 million viewers in front […]
The ‘knocker-up’ has really captivated us here at the Modern Backdrop HQ. In this weeks’ blog post we are coming back to share our progress in trying to identify who this person was in Salford during the middle of the last century. When we first posted about the ‘knocker-up’ in April this year, we posted […]
by Rosalind Edwards (University of Southampton) and Val Gillies (University of Westminster) Rosalind Edwards is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Southampton. This blog post is related to her research that focusses on family lives and policies concerning family. It discusses a fascinating diary by Pat Marsden, wife of the sociologist Dennis Marsden. […]
Let us, however, be far sighted in our plans and not discard the desirable for the attainable – that which is right for that which is expedient. S. C. Hamburger Chairman of Building and Development committee, February 1952. In 1952 the City Council published the abridged version of its 20-year development plan drafted by the […]