A collaboration between Brighter Sound, Manchester City Council and Manchester Histories, ‘Manchester Hill Remembered’ was a special, one-off cultural event to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of a near-forgotten WWI battle, where 79 men from Manchester lost their lives holding a hill against advancing German forces.

A group of  emerging musicians and spoken word artists (Young Identity) from Manchester were given just one week to create a selection of new works to commemorate the battle at a very special event held at Manchester’s Cathedral. They were mentored by Cinematic Orchestra members, Luke Flowers, Stuart McCallum and John Ellis, composer Katie Chatburn, and singer-song writers Liam Frost and Seaming-To. The King’s Division Band, Northern Voices, the Ignition Orchestra and  award winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts also joined the group towards the end of the week to rehearse specially prepared pieces for the event.

The gallery below contains some of my favourite images from the first week of the project, when the musicians and spoken word artists were holed-up in Chethams School of Music, creating and rehearsing their new works.