Speak Up!

Our cities are changing fast but not always with communities in mind. How do we find new ways to make their voices heard?

Part of PeopleFest, 5-7 April 2024

What happens when communities start speaking up about issues in their neighbourhoods? Why are their voices sometimes silenced? How can theatre be a form of action and debate in housing issues?

Discover how residents and housing campaigners in Manchester and London are getting their voices heard through theatre and participatory research. Over the past two years, researchers at the University of Manchester and at UCL in London have been working with residents neighbouring the Grenfell Tower site to explore ‘citizen social science’ as a way of understanding urban issues. Here, they share their experiences of what it means to be a citizen scientist and how they getting their ideas out there using zines, public talks and more.

In Manchester, documentary theatre-maker Nathaniel McBride is collaborating with residents and campaigners to write a play exploring housing and community exclusion during Manchester’s rapid transformation. Can theatre be a new way for their experiences to be heard? A work-in-progress reading of the script will be followed by open public discussion.

Constance Smith is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. Her work explores architecture and urban change with a focus on participatory and practice-led research with artists, theatre-makers, communities and urban practitioners.

Saffron Woodcraft is Director of the Citizen Science Academy at the Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL. She focuses on citizen ‘social’ science as a way to build new kinds of knowledge about transformative pathways for action on place-based prosperity.

Nathaniel McBride is a writer and translator. His play Dictating to the Estate, about events leading up to the Grenfell Tower fire, was performed in North Kensington in 2022. He is working on a new production about housing politics, deregulation and dispossession in Greater Manchester.