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BBC News
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Inflatable snail robot goes on show in Manchester city centre
A huge robotic snail is set to captivate crowds when it "crawls" into Manchester city centre this as Luma, the nine-metre inflatable will appear as part of a free Manchester Museum programme at St Ann's event, which will run between 10:00 and 16:00 BST on Saturday and Sunday, is linked to the venue's robotic exhibition, The Cat That Slept for a Thousand Years, which encourages visitors to "find out what happens when we pause".Museum organisers said both the snail and cat were operated with air flow, allowing the robots to respond to people's touch. "Luma is a joyful and hopeful work which champions both nature and technology, and reimagines what robots can be for," they added. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
The Guardian
22-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Manchester's Royal Exchange rooted in slavery and colonialism, research reveals
For more than 50 years it has been at the heart of cultural life in one of the UK's biggest cities. But research has revealed Manchester's Royal Exchange building was at the centre of slavery and colonialism, making it 'one of the most important locations in the history of global capitalism'. Since 1973, the building in St Ann's Square has been home to the Royal Exchange theatre, now staging Liberation (until 26 July), the critically acclaimed play marking 80 years since the 1945 Pan-African Congress – a conference that brought together luminaries of Black liberation, including Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and WEB Du Bois, in Manchester to progress national independence movements from European rule. But while the theatre celebrates African liberation, the building, in its former life, was at the heart of European colonial dominance. As a 19th-century trading hall it was the place where 'Manchester's businessmen, industrialists, financiers, and politicians made decisions and deals that transformed landscapes and environments across continents', research into the building's history found. The research, a series of reports involving the University of Manchester (UoM) emerging scholars programme, reveals how the Royal Exchange's 19th-century subscribers were enmeshed in the enslavement of African peoples, the exploitation of India, the opium trade in China, as well as the development of the economic doctrine of free trade, the birth of the modern city, and the development of liberal politics and economics. Crucially, the reports shine a light on how African people resisted enslavement, fighting a plantation economy that British elites were at the heart of. The research looks into the story of Jack Gladstone, an enslaved man on the Success sugar plantation in modern-day Guyana, and his father, Quamina, who led up to 13,000 people demanding freedom in 1823's Demerara Uprising before it was violently suppressed. Success was owned by John Gladstone, the father of the 19th-century prime minister William Gladstone, whose wealth derived from enslavement, colonialism and compensation payments after 1833's Slavery Abolition Act. Members of the Gladstone family played a key role in funding the Royal Exchange building, which was Manchester's third exchange building, completed in 1874. The story of Sandy, an African prince who staged a rebellion against enslavement in Tobago in 1770, is also highlighted. Sandy's rebellion was suppressed with the help of Lord Ducie, a Manchester landowner and Royal Navy officer who sold the land at Market Street on which Manchester's second exchange, a forerunner to the current Royal Exchange site, opened in 1809. Ducie, also known as Francis Reynolds-Moreton, was the grandson of Thomas Reynolds, a director of the South Sea Company that formed in 1711 and secured exclusive rights from the British government to traffic and sell 4,800 enslaved people annually to Spanish colonies throughout the Americas. Facilitated by Ducie's land sale, the 1809 exchange replaced the first Manchester exchange – which had been built in 1729 by Sir Oswald Mosley, an ancestor of the 20th-century fascist leader Oswald Mosley – creating an 'exclusive space' for dealmaking, the researcher Destinie Reynolds found. Mosley Street and Great Ducie Street in Manchester memorialise these family names. The second exchange professionalised commodities trading at a time when Manchester's cotton industry was booming – fuelled by crops planted, grown, picked and packed by African people enslaved and transported to the Americas, often by merchants from nearby Liverpool. Consequently, key, founding players in the second exchange – granted the 'Royal' title when Queen Victoria visited in 1851 – were traders in enslaved people, and plantation owners who 'used their power and influence to lobby in favour of the slave trade and reduce tariffs on (its) goods … helping to continue its growth', advancing the 'liberal' case for free trade simultaneously, the researcher Beth Carson found. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion These men included George Philips, one of the first backers of the Manchester Guardian, the first chair of the second exchange and a partner in Boddington, Sharp and Philips, which owned the Success plantation in Hanover, Jamaica, which relied on enslaved people's labour. The research also shows how, after the Slavery Abolition Act, business interests of 19th-century Scottish families integral to the development of the Royal Exchange – the Gladstones and the Arbuthnots – shifted to exploiting Indian indentured workers. A company in which members of both families were partners was involved in 'illegally exporting opium to China to force access to Chinese markets', as well as exporting Lancashire-manufactured textiles into India, the researcher Aashe Singh found. In 2021, as it began interrogating its past in more detail, the Royal Exchange launched the Disrvpt programme of events. This included commissioning a poem, Holding Space, from the Manchester writer Keisha Thompson (who is now the programme manager for the Guardian's Legacies of Enslavement team), which explored the building's story, in its Great Hall. The Royal Exchange theatre said of the most recent research into the building's past: 'While reclaiming this space was a radical act, we must acknowledge how this grand empty building came to be here. The building's very existence is a testament … to the colossal profits of a global cotton economy … one of the most important locations in the history of global capitalism.' Dr Kerry Pimblott, of UoM, added: 'We believe centring such accounts … raises important questions about the legacies of this history in the present and how reparative action can help shape more just futures.'
The Sun
07-06-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Major fashion brand with over 200 stores to close city centre branch in just HOURS
A CITY centre branch of a major fashion outlet is set to close its doors in a matter of hours. The branch of Cos at St Ann's Square in Manchester will close as of June 8. No statement has been issued by the retailer regarding its closure. However, a sign on the shop reads: "This store is closing on June 8. "For more information, ask a member of our team or visit Cos, which is part of the H&M group, had sat among other brands like OMEGA, Christopher James, and Mappin & Webb on St Ann's Square. The branch's staff are expected to be moved to other stores, the Manchester Evening News has reported. Another H&M brand Monki also saw a store close in Manchester's Arndale recently. Cos had taken its spot on St Ann's Square where GAP had previously been in 2018. The brand, which launched in 2007, currently boasts more than 200 stores. It comes as other high street retailers struggle across the country. The owners of River Island are understood to be drawing up a radical rescue plan, according to Sky News. Final sales begin as popular clothing brand closes all stores leaving 'devastated' shoppers scrambling for alternative The chain is being forced to restructure as a result of tough trading conditions. The firm's latest accounts at Companies House warned of growing financial and operational risks. "The market for retailing of fashion clothing is fast changing with customer preferences for more diverse, convenient and speedier shopping journeys and with increasing competition especially in the digital space," it said. Why are retailers closing stores? RETAILERS have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis. High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going. However, additional costs have added further pain to an already struggling sector. The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs from April will cost the retail sector £2.3billion. At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40. The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year. It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year. Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: "The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025." It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024. End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker. It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date. This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023. It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns. The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker. Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations. Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes. Professor Bamfield has warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector. "By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020." 2
