There’s a cool new $400 million Factory in buzzing Manchester

Manchester has traditionally struck a chord with certain tourists: soccer fans on a pilgrimage to Old Trafford (Manchester United’s “Theatre of Dreams”), musical souls seeking the formative haunts of bands such as The Smiths and Oasis, and TV buffs keen to walk the cobbles of Coronation Street, the world’s longest-running soap opera. You can still do all of this, but the cultural draws are blossoming in this rejuvenated post-industrial city.

I’m at Factory International’s Aviva Studios, Manchester’s flagship new arts hub. Crafted by OMA, the design house of star Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, this $400 million multi-space riverside venue is the UK’s largest public investment in culture since London’s Tate Modern. It will stage contemporary arts, dance and drama year-round and also act as the home of Manchester International Festival (MIF), a biennial event that puts creatives in streets, libraries, theatres and museums across the city.

Aviva Studios is the backdrop to the Manchester International Festival Square.Credit: Mark Waugh

Stepping into Aviva Studios’ cavernous warehouse to kick off the 2023 festival, I’m dazzled by the giant, surreal polka-dot inflatables of nonagenarian Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Here until August 23, this exhibition, You, Me and The Balloons, has earned rave reviews, including by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who popped in before playing at Sounds of the City, Manchester’s annual roster of outdoor summer concerts.

For Aviva Studios’ official opening later this year, Danny Boyle, the locally born Slumdog Millionaire director, will helm a hip-hop-inspired twist on The Matrix (October 13-November 5) in the auditorium of a complex that shoulders the city’s Museum of Science and Industry and spans the site of the old Coronation Street studios (“Corrie” is now shot near Old Trafford).

Originally to be just called Factory International – after the MIF operators – the venue’s naming rights were recently sold to the Aviva insurance company after the project ran almost double over the initial budget. Yet many Mancunians have vowed to keep using the “Factory” moniker.

The name honours Manchester’s heritage as the world’s first industrial city and Factory Records, the now-defunct local label behind Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays and the Hacienda nightclub, epicentre of the acid-house “Madchester” music scene of the late 1980s and early ’90s. The club’s demolition in 2002 – and replacement by the Hacienda Apartments – proved a catalyst in Manchester’s renaissance, helping to fuel an appetite for city-centre living. The leafy suburbs used to beckon, but now everyone from millionaire footballers and international students to young families and ex-Londoners have settled in “town”, many residing in converted textile mills and glassy high-rises that have given the former “Cottonopolis” a tongue-in-cheek new nickname (“Manc-hattan”).

Freight island: food, vintage items and late-night discos in an enormous rail depot.

The population surge has heralded a string of buzzy new addresses. Gordon Ramsey has just launched pan-Asian restaurant Lucky Cat in a swanky old art deco banking hall, while Climat and Higher Ground are sleek-casual, wine-led bistros with locavore chefs and seasonal menus. British ingredients also star at Edinburgh Castle, a spruced-up 200-year-old pub with sharing plates, Sunday roasts and candle-lit nooks.

Other new spots promise an industrial groove with Hacienda-esque hedonism. Expect flamboyant dance performers, frozen daiquiris, fluffy pizzas and a huge beer garden at Diecast, set at a converted foundry, while Freight Island hosts a cosmopolitan food hall, vintage markets and late-night discos at an enormous rail depot by the lovely new Mayfield Park. Another reborn Victorian relic is Castlefield Viaduct, Manchester’s version of New York’s High Line. Walk past fruits, flowers and herbs on this railway bridge-park as you peek over warehouses, canals and the ruins of Mamucium – an ancient Roman fort.

Historic John Rylands Library, one of the venues of the biennial Manchester International Festival.

Manchester’s visitor offerings will swell further in 2024. Tours of its magnificent neo-gothic town hall will resume after a six-year refurbishment, while the Harry Styles-backed, 23,500-capacity Co-Op Live will be the UK’s largest and most sustainable indoor arena. It’ll open next to the Etihad Stadium, hub of the 2002 Commonwealth Games and now home to Manchester City, a club that, bankrolled by its Abu Dhabi sheikh owner, has emerged from United’s shadow.

After winning the European Champions League in June, City coach Pep Guardiola and his players flew back to Manchester for an open-top bus parade. And in what felt like a joyous, moving piece of art – the kind curators at the Manchester International Festival yearn for – thousands of fans in blue shirts crammed the streets as the heavens opened, unleashing a classic Mancunian downpour, reminding people that, no matter how much this city evolves, some things will (probably) never change.

CGI rendering: the Harry Styles-backed, 23,500-capacity Co-Op Live will be the UK’s largest and most sustainable indoor arena.

THE DETAILS

Fly

Emirates and Etihad fly to Manchester from Sydney and Melbourne (via Dubai and Abu Dhabi, respectively). If coming from London, it’s two hours by rail.

Stay

Centrally located in a repurposed warehouse, The Alan has rooms from £79 ($150). See thealanhotel.com

More

visitmanchester.com

visitbritain.com

Steve McKenna was a guest of Visit Britain