Hulme Mural

The Hulme Urban Potters were an independent community group made up of local students at the Adult Education Centre. Their tutor, ceramic artist Brigitte Soltau, coordinated the project but described it as a genuine group effort. Songwriter and activist Claire Mooney wrote a poem that was carved into the mural, and sculptor Jim Robison advised the team. The students were Christine Barber, Joanne Duckett, Barbara Dussie, Cal Harvey, Agata Ileka, Anna Martin, David McLean, Darryll Olbinson, Stan Olsen, Wendy Porter, Delores Ragou, Alan Smith, Angela Stewart, Adam Trent, Beverley Watson, Tina Webster and Lynda Wilson. 

Design work began in 1999, when the Millennium felt like a major turning point. Newspapers warned that computers might fail as the date changed to 2000, while Hulme was already living through decades of upheaval. The Hulme Crescents had been demolished and new developments were replacing the old flats. Surrounded by change, the Potters wanted to make something lasting that showed the community’s deep roots, even as its buildings and streets repeatedly changed. 

Rather than create a simple timeline, the group chose the periods when Hulme’s physical appearance changed most dramatically. They researched in Hulme Library, next to their pottery workshop, spending weeks with photographs, newspapers and old documents. Personal collections and earlier community projects added more material. The mural’s flowing outline was inspired by the shape of Hulme’s boundaries and divided into six large panels for the long wall. 

The panels show Hulme as farmland, with timber-framed houses, wildlife and water power. They move through the industrial growth of the 1840s, when factories and shops spread across busy streets, and the bomb damage of the Second World War. The rebuilding that followed brought Caribbean newcomers whose carnivals, music and dancing added new life to the area. Later panels show the Hulme Crescents, designed in the 1960s to improve housing but damaged by serious faults that contributed to deaths and another round of demolition. The story ends with Hulme Homes for Change, a cooperative that tried to protect community life during further redevelopment. 

After an open day showed the plans to local people, the Potters faced the difficult job of turning drawings into a huge ceramic artwork. Projectors enlarged small images onto full-size paper patterns. The team tested several clays before choosing the wonderfully named “earthstone crank”, which stayed smooth and flat when fired. They sliced blocks with wire, rolled them under a long wooden cylinder and joined the slabs. Waterproof “builders paper” stopped the clay drying while they cut, carved and modelled the surface. 

Glazes and natural oxides added colour before the pieces were fired in kilns at Manchester Metropolitan University. The team then assembled the mural on the wall like a giant three-dimensional jigsaw. After more than two years of research, problem-solving and practical work, it was unveiled on a sunny Monday in September 2002 by the artists, their supporters and Johnny Vegas. 

The Hulme Mural shows what a community can create together, but the process was far from easy. Brigitte called it a “really steep learning curve” and said that, had everyone understood the difficulties at the beginning, they might not have continued. The mural’s size, constant fundraising, different working patterns and the need to combine many ideas all caused problems. Working on one project every week for two years also demanded real patience. Those who stayed with it nevertheless said they learned a great deal and enjoyed the experience. The difficulties became part of the shared achievement celebrated by the finished work.