Readings from young people including a new piece written specially for this project by poet, musician and broadcaster Benjamin Zephaniah, at a free event to thank the schools, groups and venues who contributed to The World Reimagined in Greater Manchester, a groundbreaking mass participation art education project to transform how we understand history of the Transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and its impact on all of us. Lead artist Yinka Shonibare, Artistic Director Ashley Shaw-Scott Adjaye, Senior Learning Manager Sabrina Reid.

In conversation with Maria Nepomuceno to discuss Refloresta! and the politics of textiles. Conference convened by Alice Kettle and Manchester School of Art with keynote from Turner Prize winner Lubaina Himid introduced by Tate Director Maria Balshaw.

‘A Tale of Two Libraries’ presented the findings of a staff exchange between the Portico Library and the Working Class Movement Library for the inaugural Manchester UNESCO City of Literature Festival of Libraries, followed by a free pubic discussion on the similarities and contrasts between the two collections.

During Fun & Games, an exhibition about playtime, past and present, and part of MACFEST, the international Festival of Muslim Arts and Culture, this online event brought together senior British Museum curators Dr Sushma Jansari and Dr Irving Finkel to discuss the Indian, Persian and Arab roots of the world's most famous game of strategy.

With her recent artwork Pulangkita pitjangu (When the blanket came), Rene Kulitja asks us to “think carefully” about the colonisation of her people, land and language. Rene joined attendees and curator Helen Idle live from Pitjantjatjara Country in Central Australia, to discuss this invitation and their exhibition What it is to be here: Colonisation and resistance. Rene is a Director of Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council and a traditional owner of Uluru-KataTjutu National Park.

Online discussion led by Radha Kapuria for the Materiality and Ownership rubric of the University of Sheffield’s Conflict, Cultures and (De)Colonisation History module. Helen Idle, Apapat Jai-in Glynn & James Moss on “putting together an exhibition that consciously tackled the challenges of decolonising knowledge, narratives and artefacts, through creative and self-reflexive methodologies.”

More people are talking about mental health than ever before. This public discussion explored how we can find more compassionate language to communicate about these issues, and how better vocabulary could influence policy and practice in health services. With Miriam Avery, critical mental health nurse, Lisa Lorenz, founder and editor of Nous Magazine, Darren Adcock, artist and member of Mad Pride, Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts and Recovery In The Bin, and Ian Parker, President of College of Psychoanalysts and Editorial Collective for Asylum Magazine.

ARM invites audiences into an audio-visual performance with references to theatre, installation, sound and cinema. The piece is concerned with what it feels like to be living through a period of intensifying alienation, and the tangled emotional states we find ourselves in. Free entry.

Co-produced with Masresha Getahun Wondmu, Tsige Haile, Binyam Zenebe and Nuria López de la Oliva Mena. For many years, English has been the international language of power, and first-language English speakers benefit from often unacknowledged advantages around the world. What if the roles were reversed? For this event, Amharic-speaking Manchester residents interpret Ethiopian artist Robel Temesgen’s imagined newspaper headlines in their own words for English-speaking audiences – reconsidering the balance of power between publisher, reader, translator and listener in the age of fake news and ‘alternative facts’. Watch Sophie Broadgate’s short film of the event at https://youtu.be/ej20yeolErk

What does a postcolonial future look like? Maybe it looks like Beyonce in the Louvre or a Black Panther out-take or maybe we can come up with something even better…

Directed by Tunde Adefioye (dramaturg at KVS, the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels). Co-Director: Ruby-Ann Patterson. Produced by Contact and Young Identity in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery.

The Sea Is History (2016, 28 min) enriches a search for a virtual next world after the colonial with maritime and animistic elements. Starting with a poem by author Derek Walcott, the film artfully breaks open various levels of the violent conquest of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Traces of the “creole” interdependence of yesterday and today, and the dead and the living, free up a view of a mythically charged underwater world in which there sleeps the force of a geopolitical reset. We can hear the sound of a “history that is now finally beginning.”

Manchester Festival of Psychedelia at Night and Day with Mother: Allie Bell, Chan-yang Kim, Tim Schiazza and Karl Astbury.

A symposium with artists, curators and archivists discussing the potential roles of artists’ books in contemporary art practice and research. Speakers will consider artists’ books as an intermedia art form that can engage with collecting and collections and be presented through current exhibitions, projects, performance and artists’ residences.

Collaboration between PAGES and Special Collections, University of Leeds. Supported by the Centre for Practice-led Research in the Arts.

Bluedot Festival of art and science at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire with Mother: Allie Bell, Chan-yang Kim, Tim Schiazza and Karl Astbury.

An afternoon of artist talks and debate around the theme of ‘Process’. This event is part of a programme which Studio20 ran in relation to Bankley gallery and project space throughout 2016.

Key speaker at the event was James Moss, artist and curator at The Portico Library. Supporting the talk were short presentations by Ness Donnelly, our Artist in Residence, as well as Bankley members Helen Wheeler and Claire Tindale.