Playing and Protesting: Adventure Playgrounds in 1970s-80s Manchester

By Hattie

1. Playing

As soon as I opened the ‘Adventure Play’ folder of the Elouise Edwards photograph collection I knew I wanted to write about these pictures. Although the folder also included photos of children horse riding, ice skating, river-wading and bouncy castle-jumping, the photos of the adventure playgrounds are what had me hooked. I have so many questions!  Who built them? Where were they? Were they safe? Did that even matter?

The photos show enormous wooden and metal structures, usually near a large housing block or in large empty space, with children leaping, hanging and balancing on the various platforms, slides, planks and ropes – smiling for the camera as they go. It struck me just how different playtime was for children in the 70s than it is today – not a screen in sight (just dizzying heights and a couple of splinters instead).

Lithuanian migrant experiences

By Jo Manby

Cheetham to Cordova: Maurice Levine – A Manchester Man of the Thirties, by Maurice Levine. Neil Richardson, Manchester: 1984

Whilst reading Shadows on the Tundra, a new release by Peirene Press of the testimony of a Siberian gulag survivor, I was reminded of a slim, privately published volume that I first read some years ago while working on book abstracts at the AIU Centre.

Shadows on the Tundra, the story of the Lithuanian Dalia Grinkevičiūtė’s horrifying experiences, is an incredibly important piece of international survival literature, belonging in the hallowed company of Anne Frank’s diaries, the works of Primo Levi and of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Cheetham to Cordova: A Manchester Man of the Thirties on the other hand provides the opportunity of a glimpse into the Lithuanian migrant experience here in the UK, as told autobiographically by Maurice Levine.

Afzal Khan’s political journey from Jhelum to Cheetham Hill to the Town Hall to Brussels

So two weeks on from the general election and I know we’re all pretty sick of politics, not to mention politicians, but I couldn’t let this week pass without a quick nod to Mohammed Afzal Khan MEP who was invested as Manchester’s first Asian (and youngest) Lord Mayor 10 years ago.

The Ann Adeyemi Collection: A fascinating family history

We’ve been working on the Ann Adeyemi collection recently, a family archive of photos and personal ephemera, donated by Ann in 2011 alongside a series of four oral history interviews in which she tells us about her grandparents, her parents and her own life, in her own defiant and inimitable style. This post is just a potted history – I highly recommend reading the interviews for yourself, and having a browse through her archive, to get the full and fascinating story.