| As part of
the international Shrinking Cities research project, Newbetter’s
installation, Remember Tomorrow: Hulme as Urban Myth, recapitulates
the story of one of Britain’s most infamous housing
projects. The Hulme Crescents were built in 1971 as part
of a slum clearance programme in Manchester, and within years
became a lawless, dystopian ghetto. The Crescents were finally
demolished in 1993.
Through a mixture of first person interviews,
factual research, invented magazine covers and set-design,
Newbetter’s installation reveals various facets of
Modernist Utopian planning. From ‘concrete jungle’ to
birth place of Mancunian pop music, The Crescents cultivated
a corrosive mix of social idealism, architectural failure
and inventive culture at the margins of political tolerability. |
