Monthly Archives: September 2016
Theatres of Dreams
As the Making Manchester series builds towards a close, we feature the city’s sports infrastructure in a two-part special called Theatres of Dreams: The civil engineering behind a great sporting city.
Part 1, first broadcast on 19 September 2016, features an extended interview with Simon Inglis, a leading historian of sports architecture and a former member of both the Football Licensing Authority and the Football Stadia Advisory Design Council, covering the remarkable development of Old Trafford Football Ground from 1910, and how its development has helped shape English football as a business, and of Manchester United FC as a global brand.
Part 2, first broadcast on 26 September 2016 and based on insider interviews, looks at three more of the city’s key stadiums: Emirates Old Trafford, home of Lancashire County Cricket Club since 1864 and in recent years a classic example of business diversification around a sports club; the Manchester Velodrome, home of British Cycling since 1994, and one of the keys to the acsendancy of Britain’s world-leading cycling team in recent years; and finally the Etihad Stadium, originally built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and now the home of Manchester City FC.
There’s also a taster video, and both programmes can be accessed on Mixcloud.
Moving Manchester on Mixcloud
Today’s edition of Making Manchester was broadcast by ALL FM 96.9 as scheduled, and an extended cut of the programme is now on Mixcloud.
Moving Manchester: Planes, trams and smart motorways tells the stories of Manchester’s biggest current transport infrastructure projects: Manchester Airport’s expansion (based on an interview with MAG’s Director of Planning John Twigg), Manchester Smart Motorways (based on an interview with MSM’s Project Director Dave Emery) and Metrolink’s expansion (based on interviews with Cllr Andrew Fender of Manchester City Council and Peter Cushing, Transport for Greater Manchester’s Metrolink Director).
Next week’s Making Manchester will be the first of a two-part programme called Theatres of Dreams: The civil engineering behind a great sporting city.
Re-scheduling
Unfortunately, due to a technical issue today’s Making Manchester programme will not be broadcast as scheduled.
The programme will air on ALL FM 96.9 and www.allfm.org at 0900-1000 a.m. next Monday instead (12 September).
We hope you’ll be able to join us then. In the meantime, we’ll be publishing another of the videos associated with the programme – so watch out for our video on Manchester Smart Motorways.
Sincere apologies, but we hope you’ll find the programme worth waiting for!
The Metrolink story
Ahead of our next programme Moving Manchester: Trams, planes and smart motorways, here’s a short video featuring clips from the interviews in the programme.
Cllr Andrew Fender of Manchester City Council was involved with Metrolink from its inception in the 1980s, and recounts for us the saga of transforming Metrolink from a drawing-board idea to being the UK’s biggest tram network.
Peter Cushing, Transport for Greater Manchester’s Metrolink Director, tells us about some of the engineering challenges faced in putting the system’s current seven lines and 93 stops into place over a twenty-year period.
The short video gives a flavour of the longer story in the ALL FM radio programme.
Thanks to Manchester String Quartet and Glucose Records for their kind permission to use their “Happy” in this video and others in the series.
Making Manchester 