The five pillars


The city of makers and making

In the mix, we forget about people. It is people, their ideas, and the craft in the graft make their ideas become part of our reality.

We also forget that nothing is created in a bubble. Peoples’ ideas emerge and grow in reaction to their lives, their communities, the celebrations and crises around them.

Ideas become new businesses, new plays and new exhibitions. Events to celebrate or commemorate. Spaces to build, inhabit and share.

In this, we aim to make Salford the city for makers and making.  A preferred place where creatives from all walks of life can live, work and make their work.


place-making

The City of Makers and Making– creating tools and processes that make Salford’s centres and neighbourhoods feel distinctive and open with a sense of clear identity.

There is something about a place that hits you at an intuitive level. It creates a sort of gut-reaction to its sense of identity, its feeling of openness or shelter, the mood or vibe that it invites.

For Salford, place centres around the interaction between people and locale. It envelops the residue of our shared past, the experience in the present and mutual imaginings for the future.

When place-making is seen through the lens of design, it feels natural to focus on what can be designed and delivered. Impressive buildings. Historic street furniture. High-profile events. Breath-taking gardens. This perspective has value, but places the authorship in the hands of the designer.

Through Suprema Lex, we strive to share this ‘authorship’ with the people who animate it.

A place’s sense of vibrancy not only comes from the bold colours, but what bold activity it invites. An area created for calm and quiet will only fulfil its vision if it lends itself to reflective behaviour. Spaces not only need to suggest its sense of distinctiveness; they need to provide spaces to make their identities active.

Places need people to realise their identity. In turn, people need places that invite them to live in, to be part of, to build a sense of belonging. For Salford, place-making is about the spaces we share, how we make them feel distinct and how they activate a sense of belonging.


People at the center of everything

The City of Makers and Making– creating tools and processes that make Salford’s centres and neighbourhoods feel distinctive and open with a sense of clear identity.

When we talk about the ‘arts’, we think of paintings, theatre and music.  When we talk about ‘technology’, we think of games and apps, our TVs and our phones. Our attention goes to the end-products: the stuff we buy and experience.In the mix, we forget about people. It is people, their ideas, and the craft in the graft make their ideas become part of our reality.  We also forget that nothing is created in a bubble. Peoples’ ideas emerge and grow in reaction to their lives, their communities, the celebrations and crises around them.‍Ideas become new businesses, new plays and new exhibitions. Events to celebrate or commemorate. Spaces to build, inhabit and share.‍Ideas can come from anywhere, but they are made manifest in and by people. When thinking about Salford’s creative economy and ecology, we want people at the centre. In this, we aim to make Salford the city for makers and making.  A preferred place where creatives from all walks of life can live, work and make their work.


animating the city

The City of Makers and Making– creating tools and processes that make Salford’s centres and neighbourhoods feel distinctive and open with a sense of clear identity.

As a city, Salford is awash with fantastic creative and cultural programmes. There is no shortage of creative ideas or amazing events. Festivals like Sounds from the Other City and The Lowry’s Week 53 festivals have strived and innovated over the past decades. They respond directly to their spaces and communities.  They create surprise, inspiration, new ideas, new ways of working. Along with some ridiculously good fun.

However, many events seem to fly under the radar. Independent arts and community organisations often focus their time and resource on delivery, rather than marketing and audience development. They want to get it right, first and foremost. As a result, many great events become nearly invisible outside an organisation’s own networks.

We want great culture to be pervasive across the city. We want it to be – to feel - readily available, whoever you are or wherever you live, work, or make work in Salford.

Animating the City is about connecting the dots and maximising the impact. The Salford Culture and Place Partnership is well-placed to help make this happen. We want to create an environment where great ideas can come from anywhere and become a reality in any part of the city.

Animating the City is about our common work to cultivate, grow and amplify the best this city has to offer to its people and its visitors.


destination salford

The City of Makers and Making– creating tools and processes that make Salford’s centres and neighbourhoods feel distinctive and open with a sense of clear identity.

Salford is a city with many faces. For some, it’s the city of L.S Lowry’s matchstick men and Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town. For others, it’s the glass, steel and cranes of a changing city.

In reality, Salford is both.

It is also so much more.

Salford has a cockiness and a dogged independence that permeates the city. It is a ‘city of firsts’, but not as some privileged place of entitled enlightenment. Salford has had its hard times and there are more ahead. This city has never waited for conditions to be perfect to try something new. In fact, it is often in direct reaction to the imperfect and unjust that new possibilities were forged and made for a better reality.

This is a place to land; to stay, work and play. Live and learn. Party and protest. Invest and inspire. Dream big and dive deep. It doesn’t put on airs and graces and it won’t expect you to.

Destination Salford isn’t about inventing something new or spinning our city into something it isn’t.

This strand of Suprema Lex is about the stories we want to tell and the dialogues we want to start.