Salford
Salford, the locals will tell you, is the Capital City of Manchester. In the days of Edward the Confessor, Manchester formed part of the Royal Manor of Salford, which was also called Salfordshire – and really we’ve been calling the shots ever since. What the city of Manchester does today, Benjamin Disraeli said, the world will do tomorrow. But what Manchester does today, Salford did yesterday.
Salford has been a free borough since the granting of its charter by Ranulf, Earl of Chester, c.1230 AD - just 15 years after the signing of the Magna Carta. But Salfordians have always been free thinkers, and Salford has always been a city of innovation. This is where Guy Fawkes first plotted the overthrow of Parliament. Marx hung out here for a while, and Engels railed against the Condition of the Working Class in England. Joseph Brotherton founded the Vegetarian Society here, and Emmaline Pankhurst began the battle for Women’s Right to Vote. This was the true birthplace of the Industrial Revolution; which began not with factories, but with James Brindley’s canal system. James Joule’s Laws of Thermodynamics were formulated right here. The first street in England to be lit by gas was Chapel Street in Salford. The first train may have run from Manchester to Liverpool, but we’d all be lost without Salfordian George Bradshaw, who devised the Railway Timetable. The Port of Manchester, once the third busiest port in Britain was at Salford Quays.
Salford's place in the popular imagination is unshakable. Its people and its streets have been painted by L.S. Lowry and Harold Riley, and photographed by Shirley Baker and Sefton Samuels. It is the place where Walter Greenwood found Love On The Dole, and Tony Warren first walked down Coronation Street. Immortalised in song by Ewan McCall as a Dirty Old Town, Salford is also the place where Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits got into Something Good; where the Hollies pined for Carrie Ann, while front man Graham Nash dreamed of the Marrakesh Express; where Elkie Brooks got drunk on Lilac Wine, and 10cc booked a Dreadlock Holiday; where Joy Division sought Unknown Pleasures, John Cooper Clarke Married A Monster From Outer Space, Mark E. Smith was Perverted by Language, and the Happy Mondays lived a life of Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches. The Smiths declared The Queen Is Dead in front of Salford Lads’ Club, and Mr. Manchester himself, Anthony H. Wilson (RIP), was born in Salford, and proud of it.
That Salford should be chosen as the location for mediacity:uk is simply to acknowledge its history. Mitchell and Kenyon were recording the day-to-day lives of Salford’s inhabitants as far back as 1900 and the city has been a favoured location for filmmakers ever since, from Maurice Elvey to David Lean, from Alexander MacKendrick to Tony Richardson, to Damien O’Donnell and beyond. The Salford Cine Society was making award-winning short films as early as the 1930s, and the city has continued to produced internationally-renowned, multi-award-winning talent - actors such as George Coulouris, Albert Finney, Sir Ben Kingsley, Robert Powell, Christopher Eccleston, and Stephen Lord; playwrights and screenwriters such as Shelagh Delaney and Ayub Khan Din; and directors such as Mike Leigh. John E. Blakeley’s Mancunian Films was the only film production company based outside of London. Though operating out of a South Manchester studio, it employed Salford talent, and Salford locations to deliver its promise of Northern Films for Northern People, and helped to establish the city as the thriving centre for Film and Media Production it is today. Host to the annual Television from the Nations and Regions Conference, Salford has a university with one of the largest and most highly-regarded Music, Media and Performance departments in the UK, and a Computer Science department that was a pioneer in the art of CGI.
It also has the only independent film festival in Greater Manchester.
