Research: PLACE 2020 and PLACE 2021

Research summary

• July 2020 to June 2021

The project commissioned writers and artists to reflect on place and its many meanings. The two anthologies featured contributions from artists from Barbados, Berlin, Malaysia, and New York, as well as students and staff from Manchester Met.

PLACE 2020 was the first project for the new Centre for Place Writing.

David Cooper and Rachel Lichtenstein edited the 24 digital contributions, from artists such as:

• Andy Delaney directing a short film to the words of Maya Angelou’s poem, Alone
• Jessica J Lee recording a podcast from her apartment in central Berlin
• Rachel Lichtenstein discussing the lost landscape of the Polish shtetl
• Anjum Malik creating a poetry film on new arrivals to Manchester
• Sukhdev Sandhu writing about New York in lockdown

Made in collaboration with the magazine Hinterland (University of East Anglia), the second digital anthology featured 24 more works, including:

• Elizabeth-Jane Burnett providing excerpts of letters written during the pandemic
• Natasha Carthew writing a poem on her native landscape of Cornwall
• David Cooper exploring the concept of immersion in reading about places
• Annalee Davis mapping a post-plantation site in Barbados
• Anita Sethi reflecting on her home city of Manchester

PLACE 2021 again brought together work by international artists and new projects from undergraduate and postgraduate students at Manchester Met.

These two anthologies show how thinking about place has been challenged and changed by major events such as the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.