Meet the Neighbours: The Weekend explored the politics of development, and neighbourliness as an artistic and social response.
In 1999, a few thousand people lived in Manchester City Centre. By 2019, there were more than 65,000 – and like the cranes, it keeps going up. Thriving, growing, dismantling, reshuffling, Manchester is a prime example of today’s fast-changing cities.
As populations boom in Manchester and cities like it, communities appear and disappear, moulded by the forces of growth and development. What is happening to neighbourliness amid the chaos of urban change? What will city living be like in ten years’ time and should we – can we? – steer change in a different direction?
This weekend event was an open invitation to be part of a conversation about how we live together. Bringing together a diverse range of voices and practices – from performance to activism, economics to planning – it asked important questions about how rapid development is being driven and who it is affecting.
Curated by Florian Malzacher and Quarantine, this weekend marked the end of Quarantine’s project Tenancy and of the three-year international project it was a part of, Meet the Neighbours, which invited artists into the heart of rapidly developing cities in the UK, France, Poland, the Netherlands and Morocco.
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