Free - opening times.
This Saturday join us to meet two Manchester women who have written books celebrating the communities of this city and hope for the future.
There will also be books on sale to mark Black History Month and Manchester Literature Festival.
Books in Focus:
Stories of a Manchester Street – Elaine Bishop
A century on from its original Edwardian construction, this contemporary portrait of a street in inner Manchester tells the stories of today’s residents. Born in eighteen countries from four continents, the accounts told by the residents themselves narrate their journeys from nomadic herding in Somalia to conscientious objection in post-war Germany and the UK, and from arranged marriages in South Asia to arriving from rural Ireland to find work.
With a common theme of making a new life in Manchester, this is an important account of a successful multicultural community in an ever-divided world. Profiling today’s residents alongside those who occupied their homes at the time of the 1911 census, Stories of a Manchester Street provides a colourful reflection on the changes, resilience and sense of community that lives just around the corner on our inner-city streets.
Journey to Hopeful Futures: A Handbook - Dr Helena Kettleborough, Lecturer in Sustainability, Business School, MMU
With Journey to Hopeful Futures, Helena Kettleborough offers a transformative new approach to reimagining a world which respects and restores the natural systems on which life depends. At a time when the imminent destruction of our planet can feel overwhelming, Helena invites the reader to re-energise, re-think and embark with her on a unique journey of hopeful discovery.
This journey involves self, community, planet and cosmos. Having worked as a community activist and teacher for three decades, Helena specialises in creating new spaces within the home, workplace and academy for spiritual reflection. Here, she shares that knowledge with us in a creative, important handbook aimed at nurturing new paradigms — which respect and restore the natural systems on which life depends— a world of love, equality and social justice within our living planet and sacred cosmos.
Through personal stories, research, life-experience, community and spiritual practice, she offers a unique space within which the reader can question, learn and reflect, signposting to an extensive range of resources. The handbook provides a practical toolkit of creative exercises and personal actions to revive our lives, and the world around us — vital steps towards overcoming the daily challenges we all face and to creating new, hopeful futures.