A shop that may once have been owned by the Manchester Radical Elijah Dixon has been transformed into a creative space for young people with mental health issues.
Manchester Charity 42nd Street have renovated the empty shop on Great Ancoat’s Street into a three storey, dedicated creative space to give opportunities for young people to develop creative skills and take part in a wide ranging creative programme to contribute to their mental health and well being.
They have taken inspiration from the Ancoats Art Museum; a unique social and artistic experiment established in Ancoats, at the end of the 19th Century.
Its founder, Thomas C Horsfall sought to promote wellbeing and social change through contact with art and nature. Horsfall filled the museum with artworks, sculptures, music recitals, public lectures and even live birds in a bid to make the lives of those living in the surrounding slums more bearable.
42nd Street, which has been operating for thirty six years, will this year be working with 3,000 young people across Manchester,Salford and Tameside, Trafford and Glossop,offering one to one support suchas counselling and therapy.
Mental health issues across the country are in the news at the moment.They are long waiting lists for the 13-25 year old group.
Julie McCarthy, 42nd Street’s Creative Producersays that in Manchester, the amounts of people keeping help has grown considerably over the last few years, partly, she says because people are more likely to talk about mental health a lot more, but also, she adds, ” young people are unable to access early intervention programmes the way that they uses to”.
She cites the example of youth clubs which would signpost most people towards support, most of that work has gone during the austerity years.Instead youngsters are coming to organisations like 42nd Street directly.
As a service young people can refer themselves to the organisation, around twenty per cent come that way or they can be referred by a doctor.42nd Street also works in schools and with various projects.
Manchester has the biggest waiting list at the moment, says Julie, “obviously waiting for a young person is not really acceptable and we have Benn seeking new ways to offer a wider service to more young people.That is where the Horsfall project comes in because we now a three storey space where we can offer a dedicated programme.The idea is that we are taking inspiration from the area and the history of the area and making it relevant to young people today.”
“Young people need to understand where they are in time and space”, adds Julie, ” and imaging what the future is.”
Looking though back to the past, there is no doubt that Horsfall was an early innovator when it came to mental health in the area.His legacy is a huge inspiration to the project, one that Julie adds is designed to test young people’s abilities when it comes to pushing back the boundaries of art and creativity.
One project that will be starting in the very near future is called Hidden.It is project that will see youngsters working with professional actors, and young carers and will be asking about the future of care and whether it can be replaced with an automated system.It opens on the 31st January in the new creative space.
Another project, working in collaboration with a Manchester housing association is to do with dress, how what you wear makes you feel about yourself and your body.Its starting point is the end of the nineteenth century, when a dress was fabricated by the all male committee of the Ancoats Arts Association and put on display.
The men made an ideal dress in their eyes for how women of the time should dress and it was put on display in a cabinet.When some women joined the committee, they naturally had reservations about the design, took it away and requested funds from the committee to remake it.The story goes cold there,and we never know whether the dress was made but the project intends to remake the dress, using the technology available today and there will be an exhibition behind it.
42nd Street the Space can be found at 87-91 Great Ancoats Street Manchester
Follow @thehorsfall on Twitter to find out more about their creative programmes
