Manchester’s ‘American connections’: A walking tour and public history project

The Project

The “American Connections” public history project offers a fresh cultural remapping of the city of Manchester, one that spotlights the multitude of ways in which the city has been linked to the US. Based on research by students and staff in the University's American Studies programme, and accompanied by a map by local artist Dave Draws, the project brings into view a gallery of around twenty Americans who visited this city and neighbouring Lancashire towns—from Benjamin Franklin’s visit to Chetham’s Library in May 1771 through to Bob Dylan’s concert at the Free Trade Hall in May 1966, which changed the direction of modern music.

It highlights the complexity of America’s links to this city, which spanned the arenas of politics, commerce, literature, art, and music, and brings into view the two centuries or so, from the 1770s to the mid-1960s, when such connections were strongest, of course because Manchester’s own growth as a hub of industrial capitalism, and entanglement within grids of trade and transport, was soaring.

These troubadours were led by diverse cause, their stays of variable length, what they remembered about their time mixed. Together, the project suggests, they offer up new ways to contemplate Manchester's shifting place in wider patterns of trade, political debate, and cultural exchange.

Booklet

An accompanying booklet, offering historical portraits of sixteen prominent individual or groups of Americans who came to Manchester, can be downloaded.

Check out the main University of Manchester events page for notice of forthcoming walking tours based on this research. If you are a school teacher, and are interested in hearing further about the project, please contact sonja.bernhard@manchester.ac.uk, SALC Outreach Officer, in the first instance.

The project was made possible by generous funding from the School of Arts, Languages, and Culture’s Social Responsibility stream.

Find out more about our American Studies programme