Research

08/04/13 NWFA Film Screening
In this session, Marion Hewitt from the North West Film Archive came in to show us various videos about Hulme from the collection.

No Place Like Hulme (1978):

We were shown this YouTube video about the Hulme crescents, which highlighted why the crescents failed so badly. 

• The long walk ways didn't feel like streets as they were intended to.
• The children had nowhere to play but the decks and stairs, creating noise for the residents. It was also dangerous for children to play there.
• When lifts were broken families with prams, groceries, toddlers etc had to walk up the flights of stairs.
• Once one flat was affected with vermin, an entire block would suffer from it.
• As Hulme became so unpopular, the council made it a dumping ground for homeless families resulting in a high proportion of problem families being concentrated in one place. This lead to crime rates soaring and residents being scared to open their doors.
• Residents didn't have any sense of ownership or 'home' because their little flat was just one of thousands of others, which were exactly the same. Thus they didn't feel any responsibility towards their flat and didn't bother to look after it. 
• Decks weren't patrolled by police. 

A City Speaks (1947): We were then shown Chapter 5 of a film called 'A City Speaks'. The film was made by Paul Rotha for Manchester Corporation in 1947, a time when Hulme was a sea of terraced slums. The chapter we watched was on the Hulme Redevelopment scheme. The documentary compared two different parts of Manchester: one area that had already been redeveloped, and one that hadn't (Hulme). The developed area was shown to have different houses of different sizes for different people's needs. They had bathrooms, front and back gardens and were spaced out. The film expressed that the council also wanted to develop Hulme but that there would be less spaces for people to live. The residents were told that some people would have to move and sacrifice their current lives for the benefit of Hulme.

We were shown another video after this which consisted of various interviews of people who had grown up in Hulme/Moss Side. What struck me most was the sense of community spirit that all of the interviewees told about. I was also surprised at how diverse Hulme was/is and the mixture of cultures and races that lived there side by side.