COMMUNITY PROJECTS 2026

Don't miss...

the BIG BURNAGE PARADE, the FESTIVAL OPENING and the FOG LANE FINALE

Plus...

Didsbury-based artist, Toubie Jack, has worked with 450 students in both primary and secondary schools across Burnage, Old Moat and Didsbury, offering plastic fusing workshops that turn soft plastic waste generated in their own households into art. In advance of the sessions, the children are invited to collect soft plastic packaging and taught how to safely melt the plastic produce a panel of colourful plastic fabric. The plastic panels produced by each school are then assembled by Toubie into the fish.

Whilst this all seems like fun, it has got a very serious message, as the amount of plastic in the sea is predicted to outweigh fish by 2050.

Come and support Didsbury’s campaign for reducing plastic waste in the sea. See the fish in the Big Burnage Parade, the Fog Lane Finale and elsewhere, and join People Place Planet – Didsbury, as they work for increased action and visibility, to protect our planet.

Throughout Didsbury Arts Festival 2026 in Didsbury library, Quarantine artist Kate Daley will be holding conversations with people in the library, and will then hand make a book based on these conversations, with the text shaped by Didsbury writer Teresa Brayshaw. The finished book will then enter the library’s collection for future readers. A beautiful object, carefully made, the book will be an alternative portrait of the library, the people who use it and the knowledge it holds.

This is a project by internationally acclaimed Manchester-based artists Quarantine, whose work across performance and other forms deals with the politics and aesthetics of contemporary experience and how we relate to one another.

As part of DAF26's community education programme, the festival has commissioned Mark Hobbs, award-winning documentary and portrait photographer, to work with GCSE students at Parrs Wood High School to create a special outdoor photographic exhibition for the festival. For 12 weeks, 40 students in year 10 explore the theme of Visible/Invisible, uncovering the hidden stories in our community, and the day-to-day things we take for granted.

Seen Unseen will be unveiled at the festival and a prize will be awarded at a special opening event on Sunday 28th June. This project has been made possible thanks to generous sponsorship from local businesses: Choice Home Tutoring, Creamline, Joyful Orthodontics, Paul Andrew Jones Interiors, Realm Property Finance, Towers Manchester, Ward Hadaway.

Everyone is very welcome at the second Westcroft Art Show! Artwork made by local people will be on display throughout DAF 2026 in Westcroft Community Centre on Westcroft Road, and in the run up to the Big Burnage Parade.

'We have so many amazing artists within our local communities who never get a chance to show what they can do, and we want to change that. Our first show was in 2023, and the creativity demonstrated was outstanding. With DAF’s support, we are pleased to be able to showcase the community’s art again, and to even more people'.

For more information, please contact Linda on westcroftbookings@gmail.com

This spring, Reshma Ruia, award-winning author and poet, has facilitated ‘Belonging’, an expressive writing project with female refugees. The collaboration between Reshma, Didsbury Library and Caritas, invited 10 women to share their stories in short prose, looking at identity, strength, home and journeys. The work will be presented at Didsbury Library during the festival.

Reshma Ruia is a writer of poetry, short stories and fiction, with a PhD and masters in Creative Writing and Critical Thought from Manchester University, the co-founder of a writers collective of British South Asian writers, and a trustee on the Board of Manchester City of Literature.

Returning for DAF 2026, this ever-popular exhibition enables us to showcase the incredible creativity being nurtured in the local classrooms, and to do it in the most visible way possible. By partnering again with secondary schools, and with local shops and businesses, we will be transforming shop windows across the area into a vibrant, and very public, gallery.

This unique art trail offers the community a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the talent and hard work of our local students.