The Park in the City: Whitworth Park Community Archaeology and History Project

05 Mar 2012

Wednesday 7 March in Kanaris Lecture Theatre, The Manchester Museum (3pm) followed by discussion wth tea and coffee (4pm).

Hannah Cobb, Melanie Giles and Sian Jones, The University of Manchester

Public parks are important components of urban landscapes throughout the UK, a response to the immense changes associated with nineteenth-century industrialisation and urbanisation. In this seminar, we discuss the materiality of the urban Park with reference to a new interdisciplinary project focusing on Whitworth Park in Manchester. Through the combined use of archival, archaeological, oral historical and social research, the project explores the changing role of the urban park in terms of class, consumption, citizenship, leisure, memory and place.

This project is a collaboration between the University of Manchester's Department of Archaeology, The Manchester Museum, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Friends of Whitworth Park and the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relation Resource Centre, and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, The University of Manchester and Manchester City Council.