Review: A Flaneurs Guide to the Northern Quarter

Devised especially for the Manchester Weekender, The Flaneurs Guide to the Northern Quarter consisted of 4 simultaneous tours of the area, each with a slightly different focus, but all with the aim of encouraging participants to experience life and urban activity from a new perspective.

Starting from Thomas Street Restaurant, we eager explorers were inducted into the Northern Quarter Stories School of Flaneurism. As explained by our dandy guides, flaneurism is the practice of wandering or strolling through the urban environment responding artistically and sensorially to people and place. We were encouraged to experience the street in more contemplative ways, just as the original flaneur of 19^th century Paris would once have done.

Organised by art collective Northern Quarter Stories, the tours are part of a wider project aimed at celebrating 240 years of life in the Northern Quarter.  Project co-founder and my tour guide, Mark Babych spoke of the group’s ambition to ethnographically document and preserve the cultural diversity and creative energy of the present area for future generations to benefit from. This will be achieved by bringing together contributions from tour participants, be they stories, recollections, facts, images or perspectives. Although ambitious, by attempting to create a patchwork of social history that may otherwise be lost, the project appears a worthwhile endeavour.

As we set off along our route our guide provided a brief history of the area and pointed out sites of interest that may previously have gone unnoticed, such as the grand Edwardian architecture of Oldham Street, and the quirky street art of Tib Street.  Despite this guidance, self-led exploration remained central to the tour. Upon re-converging in Thomas Street, discussion of our findings was recorded, to be added to the larger body of information already contributed.

Although perhaps not fitting with the observational spirit of flaneurism, the tour would have benefitted from greater emphasis on the area’s historical usage and significance, if simply to help the Northern Quarter newbie put their interpretation into some kind of broader historical perspective.  Despite this, the kind of engagement the tour encouraged is often prohibited by the fast paced realities of modern life; we could all benefit from taking a moment to step back and consider our surroundings in a more personal way. The true flaneur would describe this act as the very key to understanding and participating in modern city life.