Salford Everywhere (2026)

Public Artwork | Salford, UK | Salford Council / From the Other

A collective video portrait made for Salford’s centenary. 1,653 people from across the city were projected at monumental scale onto the Shopping City tower, culminating in a gathering of thousands at Peel Park with a soundtrack and live music.

Filming Tour

We took a touring film set to ten locations across the city, from Victorian ballrooms to hospitals, MediaCity and social clubs. Every participant was filmed in front of the same grey backdrop. Facilitated by movement director Kevin Turner MBE, people were first filmed parading as a group, then one by one, encouraged to represent themselves through movement, objects and actions.

A City Gathering 

Thousands gathered at Peel Park to watch Salford Everywhere, where all the filmed groups came together in a triptych. School children, NHS workers, drag artists, vicars, Tesco staff, construction workers, pigeon fanciers and the production crew crossed paths across the three facades of the Maxwell Building, in moments of juxtaposition and playfulness. As on a busy street, the audience’s eyes were drawn from one character to another.

Shopping City Procession

Ten minutes up the road from Peel Park, the iconic Shopping City tower hosted a procession of all 1,553 participants across both evenings, each having their moment as part of the collective. People travelling to and from Peel Park passed beneath it, encountering the projection as a monumental credits list. It also shared the project with the wider city: a tribute, on Salford’s 100th birthday, to the people who make it up.

Music

The Peel Park event was set to a soundtrack by DJ and composer AFRODEUTSCHE, drawing on Salford’s musical heritage as well as global influences. It was punctuated by live performances from poet Lynn Walton, Eccles Borough Band and the Pendleton Sixth Form College Choir, with the band and choir arranged and conducted by Michael Betteridge. The evening closed on “Dirty Old Town”, Ewan MacColl’s song about Salford, sung back to the city by the people of the city, bringing moments of both poignancy and joy.

Over 4,000 people came to see the performances at Peel Park, greeting the work with cheers and some tears. Coaches brought participants in from further-flung parts of the city, and full recordings were shared with every community group involved, so those who couldn’t attend could still see themselves in the work. Salford City Mayor Paul Dennett personally thanked everyone involved for bringing people together, at a moment of social division in the city and the wider country.

A souvenir poster designed by Lydia Wakelam of From the Other was given to every attendee, risograph-printed with the names of all the gro