Skyliner

Multi award winning cities blog. The pursuit of the North West's rare and fascinating architecture, art and history. (Buckminster Fuller)

The original alternative walking tours of Manchester http://theskyliner.org/ How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

25/08/2026

Grid post for posterity. Despite some recent reels telling you otherwise - The Minut Men are in absolutely no way inspired by the Native Americans in Salford. They're a nod to the more pagan corn king and spring queen pieces by the same artist, William Mitchell, but reimagined for an industrial and technological-facing Salford.

Link in bio for more 🤓

11/08/2026

There's only a few tours left for the rest of summer. This Thursday, a rare midweek tour, and then Saturday 29th. Come and learn about the art and politics of the city's Northern Quarter.

Booking link in bio.

Some Manchester Day shots for attention Manchester Day

25/07/2026

Recently, PLANT CO-OPERATIVE tidied up some of the planting by Siop Shop including removing the rather dead looking honeysuckle (which itself replaced the original clematis) planted by Liz as part of this 90s mural.

I caught up with Liz earlier and she's delighted about a new lease of life for the wall, with a new purple flowering plant in place. I wonder if this one will fullu take over the mural as she'd once intended.

For now, the replacement has meant we get to see a few pieces of the mural that have been covered for a while, like this lovely circular piece covered in the waves of the river Tib.

🌊💚

22/06/2026

Hiya!

Meant to do these "who am I" posts once in a while, right? (Also inspired by someone not knowing what I did for work recently and called me a bum 😅) *

I'm Hayley. I'm from Ashton in Makerfield and live in Whalley Range. I've been running Skyliner since 2011, I work as a researcher (in local history and urban placemaking), I'm also a critical thinking tour guide, cultural placemaking strategist, and get I evolved in all manner of projects that touch on those areas. I also work as to advise on ethical and equitable culture art and placemaking, including for The Turner Prize in Bradford, and run workshops that teach young people to be critical thinking guides. I'm one of only eight people globally to be awarded a Gehl award for critical thinking skills, and I have a book in the works about the arts led regeneration of the Northern Quarter since the 1960s.

I also work creatively with textiles, current projects include a banner of 250(ish) Greater Manchester and Lancashire women, a dress which formed the basis of a tour for The Guardian and Scott Trusts Legacies of Enslavement programme, and an enormous lace tapestry celebrating a super interesting historic figure (to be revealed in the next year if funding is successful)

I was the UK's only City Curator, and I'm a sometime journalist having written for The Guardian, the babes at STAT and global publications like Untapped New York. Occasionally I do bits of location scouting.

I get involved in the management of town centres including night time economy advice, I've also got several years under my belt of ghost writing and speech writing for cultural directors. I have an MA in Place Writing so write creative non fiction for Caught By the River, Elsewhere journal, and Comma Press.

I volunteer locally too, including a couple of hours a month at the soup kitchen near me, litter picking, and helping with school street closures.

I will add, there's not nearly enough work to support me lately, but that's an economy issue, not me being a bum 😜

So hello to new followers! I love collaborating with people so say hi ❤️

[*there's been tears, as I trust the awkward lol communicates]

12/05/2026

A very special tour, May 20th.

This is part of a four-part commission by The Guardian's Legacies of Enslavement Programme & GM Moving called the Heritage in Action routes. I am so grateful to be working with these two organisations on a free tour.

The Legacies of Enslavement programme understands restorative justice as a process of dialogue and collaboration aimed at repair and healing between The Guardian - an institution that benefited from transatlantic enslavement - and descendants of the enslaved. Manchester was the first industrial city in the world. This was built on the cotton trade. This is a shared history.

This route largely focuses on the public art and monuments of the city and the ethics and equity of them, as well as critically assessing the cultural objects review undertaken by Manchester City Council as a response to BLM in 2020 in an effort to help us to draw the links between our past and present.

Fellow route makers are:

and Sajida Ismail

[Photo taken during the install of the Peterloo mural feat. my beautiful friend Lydia of and for which very generously had me on board for some of the creative process]

29/04/2026

No one told me the Turner Prize was in town

06/12/2025

I'll do at least a few of these over December. I like the element of surprise that you just don't get from a daily advent

(or my adhd makes commitment impossible or whatever)

01/12/2025

The chapel at Philip's Park cemetery going off in the winter sun.

Xmas shoppers: despite what my website wants you to think, I am still selling your gift vouchers.

They come as a pair, with no expiry, for £30 and are a digital file that you can print at home if you wish.

My site thinks I'm in America and won't let me change my default currency back, and won't accept purchases as a result. Thanks - not like I've not sent you a small fortune over the last 15 years 😭 So if you wanna buy, you can send payment direct to PayPal or message me for bank deets!

PayPal. Me/skylinermcr (will update bio with this link).

Thanks so much for all your support so far, and for any incoming Xmas support...god bless you, everyone
*Tiny Tim grin to camera*

25/11/2025

Took this five years ago and that's how rapid my content turnaround is.

Those little bridges you'd get between mills and warehouses had a few purposes but staff retention in the early days of capitalism was a struggle, with people being forced out of agriculture or of a life where you made and provided for yourself or transactionally for your community. People just hated labouring for wages (girl, same) and a motivation for many bridges or tunnels was to at least remove temptation when workers had to move between sites, of running off back home instead of delivering messages. All power to the fleeing labourers if early capitalism - my soul sisters.

(There's some really interesting figures about the labour retention in Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert) .

Beautiful Ancoats (pretty sure this was inspired by a shot by from a similar time?)

22/10/2025

Really great to see this uncovered again at

Covered up sometime around 2010, the work was created by Wendy Jones and Liam Curtin of Majolica Works in the early 80s who'd been based in the centre at the time and also created the fish mosaic on the rear of the building.

This shows fish swimming through the centre (formerly the retail fish market). Liam is delighted it's back :)

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http://theskyliner.org/

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