Bolton Observed
To commemorate Bolton as the Greater Manchester Town of Culture, Live from Worktown revisited ideas from our Mass Observation work last year to produce an illustrated anthology of writing and photography, compiled from submissions from local people.
Bolton Observed – an open call to the Bolton public for contemporary observations of everyday life in the town, in the form of poems, diary entries, overheard conversations, random or planned observations in public spaces or at events, that speak for themselves. The above photo was used in the campaign by Live from Worktown to promote the open call for writing submissions.
Our Cultural Landscapes – run in parallel, I organised a photo competition asking people to send images of a place that’s important in their life and best sums up their personal experience of living, working or being in Bolton. My photo below was used to promote the photo competition, the Cigarette Tunnel, a local landmark much loved by kids through the decades as a place to have a secret smoke.
Backstreet Pantomime
I was lucky enough to have a written piece accepted for the anthology, which describes one of my photos used as an illustration.
The backstreets of Bolton are an intrinsic and defining part of the town, existing as a sub-culture or an alternative network to navigate the town’s identity. Whether cobbled or tarmacked over, they link us back to our industrial past highlighting both the remarkableness and everydayness of the people who fuelled the cotton industry. I sometimes take these uneven, typically unkempt routes into the town centre, to remind myself of another side of Bolton life that you don’t get to see from the main routes.
Often the backstreets are just lined with the multi-colour arrangement of bins, beige, burgundy, green and grey, per household that jostle with cars finding parking near homes on terraced streets that were never built with the appreciation that residents would someday own vehicles.
Sometimes though, you catch a glimpse of the unusual and unexpected, like on one occasion a few years ago when I came across two men carrying an upturned corrugated metal shed. Well, when I say carrying, it was more like they were wearing the shed, much in the way two actors would wear a pantomime horse costume. I watched amusedly from behind as they stumbled across the cobbles. From my perspective, I’m not sure whether they could see where they were going or not, or whether all they could see was the patch of paving directly around their feet. Judging by the expletives I heard, I’m guessing their field of vision was actually quite narrow. I resisted the temptation to shout out “it’s behind you!”.
I still think about that sight – or performance, given it was quite theatrical in many ways – and wonder why they were moving the shed in that manner or indeed at all.
Was it a couple of friends moving a shed from one back garden to another nearby or had more modern technology been involved, like buying the shed off Facebook marketplace? Did the shed belong to one of them or were they doing a favour for a neighbour, who needed two strong blokes to move it for them? I guess I’ll never know the answer to those questions but the memory still brings a smile to my face. For me, that sums up Bolton, expect the unexpected and be open to those moments of sheer comedy genius, it really couldn’t happen anywhere else!
Should you be interested, copies of the anthology are available from the Live from Worktown online shop at a reduced price of £7.50, including postage and packaging.
