Film fans in Manchester will soon be able to kick back and watch their favourite blockbusters with free-flowing popcorn and alcohol.
A Bottomless Cinema experience is set to launch in 2022, with a packed calendar of classic films.
The events will kick off in March and dates have already been scheduled all the way through to October.
Films on the schedule include all-time favourites like The Goonies and The Breakfast Club, as well as smash-hit successes from the last few years including The Greatest Showman, Rocket Man and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Mamma Mia. Credit: Supplied
Musical fans will be able to see Mamma Mia, Chicago, Hairspray and Moulin Rouge – to name a few.
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Then there are family favourites including Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, plus teen classics like Mean Girls, Clueless and Legally Blonde.
All tickets for the Bottomless Cinema come with unlimited popcorn, with the option to upgrade to bottomless booze too for £15.
Free balcony greening workshops are happening across Greater Manchester to create ‘mini wildlife havens’
Emily Sergeant
Free balcony greening workshops are happening across Greater Manchester this spring to help people create their own ‘mini wildlife havens’.
While many Greater Manchester residents would love to have a garden of their own, that’s sadly not always the reality if they live in a flat or apartment complex, but instead they may have a balcony – in fact, it’s believed that there are around 60,000 balconies across the region, which adds up to the size of a whopping 33 football pitches.
That’s why the National Trust is on a mission to help city dwellers create their own green spaces through its ‘Sky Gardening Challenge’.
The conservation charity is encouraging people with balconies to ‘grow and green’ the town or city they live in from skyline spaces such as balconies, in the hopes that it’ll enhance their connection to nature and improving their wellbeing, all while helping wildlife thrive at the same time.
Greening a balcony space could apparently support 1.4 million meals for pollinators, like Manchester‘s beloved bees.
Free balcony greening workshops are happening across Greater Manchester to create ‘mini wildlife havens’ / Credit: National Trust
To help people get started on their greening mission and create their own wildlife haven, the National Trust is offering a free balcony gardening guide, free seeds, and free workshops in collaboration with lots of brilliant community organisations across the region – including Hulme Community Garden Centre, Plant CIC, and Northern Lily.
A number of workshops are also being ran this month with Cloud Gardener – a Manchester local, and a well-known face of the balcony gardening world.
With the first workshop in the lineup taking place tomorrow (15 May) and the final one on 7 June, there’s something for everyone to join in with, no matter where you are on your balcony greening journey, from classes in ‘Balcony Basics’ to ‘Edible Growing’, ‘Urban Farming’, and so much more.
And the best bit? All the workshops are free to take part in.
“The impact of our balcony garden extends beyond its small size,” explained a 2024 National Trust Sky Gardening Challenge participant. “It serves as a peaceful retreat for us, offering a place to relax and reconnect with nature. We are lucky to be looking out to such a lush green space right outside of our balcony.”
Another previous participant commented: “The workshops and socials helped me get started and motivated me to do it as I have had lots of health problems, and I had lost the will to do it.
“I felt very tired at first, but now I can spend an hour or so everyday day, and I love sitting in my garden listening the birds or even just the wind blowing through the trees.”
Find out more and book yourself onto a free workshop on the National Trust website here.
Featured Image – National Trust
What's On
Life-sized animal puppets to be paraded through Greater Manchester this summer
Emily Sergeant
Dozens of life-sized puppet animals are to embark on a journey through Greater Manchester this summer.
From the team behind The Walk with Little Amal – the Syrian refugee child puppet who made the journey across the world, and our borough, back in 2021 – comes a new life-sized spectacle called THE HERDS, which will visit Manchester as part of the opening of this summer’s Manchester International Festival (MIF).
The hugely-ambitious new public artwork is set to transform Greater Manchester into a ‘breathtaking untamed spectacle’ as a way of vividly dramatising the climate crisis.
Life-sized animal puppets travel will be travelling through the city centre, Heywood in Rochdale, and Pennington Flash in Wigan this July as part of their 20,000km journey from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle.
This is a public artwork on a scale never attempted before.
The animals are visiting Manchester as part of an epic journey – which began on 9 April from Kinshasa in the Congo – and as they cross different continents, the herd will grow in numbers and species including elephants, giraffes, antelope, lions, and others local to the area they are travelling through.
To help further highlight the scale of the climate crisis and the collective effort needed to fight it, the puppets are set to operated by local participants in each city – including in Manchester.
Because of this, Factory International and The Walk Productions are looking for amateur makers and DIY enthusiasts to join the puppet build, as well as 100 local people to help operate the puppets in Manchester, Heywood, and Wigan.
Life-sized animal puppets are being paraded through Greater Manchester this summer / Credit: Ant Strack
For the opening event of MIF25 on Thursday 3 July, THE HERDS first arrives in Manchester city centre and will scatter through the city’s main streets, so if you happen to find yourself between Cathedral Gardens and Market Street on the day, then you might just stumble upon them.
After opening MIF25, the animals are then abandoning the bustling city for the residential streets of Heywood in Rochdale on Friday (4 July).
For the final stop on their Greater Manchester journey, THE HERDS find a fleeting refuge in the wild beauty of Pennington Flash Country Park in Wigan on Saturday 5 July, and visitors are invited to explore the park’s winding trails and quietly observe as 70 life-sized puppets appear amid the trees and wetlands.
Amir Nizar Zuabi, who is the Artistic Director of THE HERDS, calls it a ‘a living breathing call to action that stampedes across continents’.
“THE HERDS is an urgent artistic response to the climate crisis,” he added. “Through the beauty and ferocity of these life-size creatures, we aim to spark dialogue, provoke thought, encourage engagement and inspire real change.”
You can see THE HERDS in Greater Manchester from Thursday 4 – Saturday 5 July.
Featured Image – Berclaire (for The Walk Productions)
The Manc -
24th January 2022 
