best of manchester (+ pies)

The winners of this year’s Best of Manchester Awards were announced last night at a special award ceremony at Urbis. As has become usual of late, I was watching via twitter, but I was still very pleased to hear that the excellent Owl Project had been announced as winner of the Art category. The collective made up of artists Simon Blackmore, Anthony Hall and Steve Symons cite their influences as woodwork, hobby-style electronics and open source software: their semi-sculptural musical instruments have been exhibited across Europe as well as at events such as the Sonic Arts Network EXPO, Lovebytes and Futuresonic.


However, there’s no doubt that it must been a very difficult decision for the judges (a panel of industry experts that included Peter Saville, Wayne Hemingway, Jeremy Deller, Tim Marlow and Miranda Sawyer) to make since the others on the shortlist – artist Rachel Goodyear and collective Contents May Vary – were also very deserving of this accolade.

Congratulations also go to Holly Russell, winner of the Fashion category, and Max Moran and Jayne Compton who were joint winners of the Music award. You can see work by the winners, as well as the others on the shortlist, in a special Best of Manchester exhibition at Urbis, opening today and running until 20 September.

The BOMAs got me thinking about all the other ‘best of Manchester’ things that I’ve been missing since heading Down South: people, places, and even, yes, things to eat. Just this week my extremely kind and considerate father sent me a text message to tell me he was tucking into a butter pie with peas and gravy, just as I was sitting at my desk toying with a rather uninspiring couscous salad. Now, I’m pretty sure that butter pie is something that just doesn’t exist here in London - there’s also a very disturbing shortage of gravy and peas. Butter pie would definitely appear on my personal ‘best of Manchester’ shortlist! (I know several people have already made the excellent suggestion of adding a writer category to the Best of Manchester Awards next year, but what about a food category too...!)

What would you include on your personal ‘best of Manchester’ list?

[Images via urbis and future of sound]

4 comments:

24 July 2009 at 14:22 Benjamin Judge said...

Although you won't get butter pies they sometimes do a very good pie at the Peyton and Byrne café at the Wellcome Collection.

Best of Manchester? The Cheese Hamlet, Unicorn, Vimto, The Gallery of Craft and Design at Manchester Art Gallery, Patrice Evra, The old Midland Bank building, The way the motorway weaves through the university, the rain, Manchester tart, The Mussaman curry at Walruss, the cocktails in The Modern, The Armenian Taverna, the peregrines, Jim Medway's Oxford Road, Central Library, The Exchange, Hunters...

24 July 2009 at 14:37 Katherine Woodfine said...

Excellent list! And thanks for the pie recommendation - I'll check it out...

24 July 2009 at 14:39 The Plashing Vole said...

The People's History Museum, the Hallé, proper back streets.

24 July 2009 at 14:51 Benjamin Judge said...

The cakes there are amazing too. The collection is also excellent. It was closed when Jo and I went but I got lost looking for the loos and ended up alone in the main gallery. So unless you want to do some sneaky trespassing avoid Mondays.