Power in the City Performance Walk
Performative walk, Research project
Role: Researcher, scriptwriter, director, performer.
Embedded in action research process GM Energy Futures, commissioned by Jam and Justice and funded by Mistra Urban Futures.
In collaboration with Carbon Coop Manchester and part of a long-term collaboration with Professor Hannah Knox.
With: Hannah Knox, Jonathan Atkinson and Mike Taylor.
A performative walk through Manchester’s electric past, telling the story of how energy infrastructures have developed from the early days of municipal entrepreneurialism to grand national infrastructures, to then be sold off in Thatcher’s aggressive privatisation politics. The walk was performed for invited audiences of local authority actors, energy practitioners and energy transition activists and acted as a provocation for dialogue around democratising public utilities.
“The walk is based on archival research into the technical, social and organisational histories of electricity in Manchester and wends a chronological path through Manchester’s urban landscape, from the neo-gothic library of the John Rylands library built with the proceeds of coal extraction, to the sheer glass edifice of the Beetham Tower that towers over the city’s Victorian heritage providing a view of the glittering lights on the 21st century city. Through the walk, we conjure, for those who join us, a visceral sense of how electricity came to penetrate the city, how it was tamed and controlled, how it came to be hidden away, and how now it is making a return in ways that may be able to create new opportunities for people to become involved in decisions about how the city should be powered.” (Hannah Knox)