Culture

toc Manchester is a multicultural city. As you walk around, you find a Chinatown, an Indian area, restaurants from the whole the world and even a Danish street. Manchester is a also young town as it grew with the industrial revolution.

The root of the culture of a city is often found in its main trade. The growth of Manchester started with the industrial revolution, where the city became a centre for the development of the industry in England – the city was named “mini London” with heavy influence of the secondary sector. In particular the cotton industry was dominant and a key in the finances of the city. As such Manchester was best defined as a “working class city”. Today, the main occupation is found in the tertiary sector, like tourism, lots of IT and service industries. On a global scale Manchester is best known for its football team Manchester United – and to a lesser extend Manchester City.

Below, I will try to capture the culture of Manchester by describing main cultural events and features of the city. This includes football, literature and public access to literature (library), museums, performing arts (theatre) and foods and cafes.

=Football and sports= Football is a very important part of the culture of Manchester and the citizens of Manchester are very much into football – you are either a fan of United or City. Manchester city and Manchester United are the Premier League clubs in Manchester. Manchester United is located a just outside the centre of Manchester, but still in the in the borough of Manchester. Manchester United is currently the best team in England, and its home ground is Old Trafford. Manchester united was founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910. United is as a cultural phenomenon both within Manchester and worldwide is larger than City’s. This is partly due to its consistency in being a top European club, but to the “history” of the Munich disaster where a large part of the first team died in an air crash in 1958. Today, United is considered as the words most valuable football team with a market value of approximately DKK 10 billion So if you like football it would be obvious to see or go to a game or take a guided tour at Old Trafford. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, being beaten into fourth place by Atlanta in 1996 and coming third to Sydney in 2000. Instead, it was decided that Manchester would host the 2002 Commonwealth Games with many first class sporting facilities being built for the games, including the City of Manchester Stadium, the Manchester Velodrome and the Manchester Aquatics Centre. The 2002 games were considered a success, surpassing all expectations and demonstrated Manchester as a reinvigorated city for the 21st century – leaving it image of a rundown industrial city – and giving London impetus to bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.

=**Literature**= Despite being a working class city, literature has held key place in Manchester. In Manchester you find a very beautiful library, the Manchester city library. The Manchester City Library has been a cultural treasure to Manchester since 1854. In his inaugural address that year, Mayor elect Frederick Smyth proposed the establishment of a free public library for all of Manchester's citizens. Until then, members of the so-called Manchester Athenaeum could borrow books from their book collection. The Manchester Athenaeum collection was officially transferred to the city on September 6, 1854, bringing to life Mayor Smyth's dream of a Manchester City Library. This was the first free liberally in England and now it is the biggest public library in the world. Its architecture is known especially for the Roman style, and it is inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. In the 19th century, Manchester featured in works highlighting the changes that industrialisation had brought to Britain. These included Elizabeth Gaskell´s novel Mary barton // : A Tale of Manchester Life // (1848), and the condition of the working class in England in 1844, written by Friedrich Engels while living and working in Manchester. Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel Hard Times in the city, and while it is partly modelled on Preston it shows the influence of his friend Mrs Gaskell. Now the culture changed because of the now massive focus on the working class.

=Museums= A lot of the culture and history in Manchester is collected in the Museums. Manchester is filled with museums. The most "famous" museum is the museum of science and industry. Here you learn about Manchester in the industrial revolution and Manchester's influenze on the rest of Britain. This museum is very fun and it’s easy to learn from (it is also for children). In the museum you find a lot of information from the industrial revolution, and the development of science. The museum is quite large, and if you are with children you can spend a lot of time in it, but without it can be boring and you doesn’t learn a lot from it. Then there is the history museum, where you learn about the development of the working class which is also a very important part of the culture in Manchester. Manchester is a working-class city, and the history and the things you learn at the people´s history museum is based on the working class, eg Manchester United was the working class football team.

=**Theatre**= In Manchester there is a lot of theatres and the scene for performing arts is quite large. The biggest theatre is Palace. Then there is the Opera house, the Lawry theatre, and the library theatre (those are the most known). Palace is the most famous theatre in Manchester (and now they are showing the musical Disney’s the lion king), so if you are bored one night it would be a good experience.

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The first theatre in Manchester was the Theatre Royal, established in 1775. The town soon became one of the stock company centres with a group of resident actors who supported the travelling "stars". Great actors and actresses who appeared on the Manchester stage included the Kembles and the Keans, Macready, Henry Irving and Sir Johnston. In the latter half of the 19th century the Prince's Theatre in Oxford Street was the scene of a series of public-spirited dramatic enterprises, including those remarkable Shakespearean revivals organised successively by John Knowles and Charles Calvert. Several other theatres, especially the Gaiety and the Queen's, had in the meantime begun to provide entertainment of varying quality for the growing theatrical public. These included a further series of Shakespearean revivals given at the Queen's Theatre by Messrs. Flanagan and Louis Calvert. The Independent Theatre staged some of the plays of Henrik Ibsen for the first time in England outside London. The first British repertory theatre was opened at the Gaiety Theatre in Peter Street in 1908 by Annie E.F. with great success. Productions were of a high standard and the plays included works by Ibsen, Synge, W.B. Yeats, Bernard Shaw, Verhaeren, Hauptmann, Sudermann and Euripides, as well as some of the English classical dramatists. Among dramatists of the early 20th century mention should be made of Stanley Houghton whose dramas were performed on the Gaiety stage. example has many films about "the old London" been filmed in Manchester because of its still living old culture.

=Food and cafes=

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Almost everywhere you go in Manchester you find restaurants, cafés and bars. Because of the multicultural society you find Italian, Chinese, English, Spanish, Japanese and also Danish restaurants. There are also the well-known fast food places, like pizza, Thai take away and burgers. So as regards food there is something for everyone. If you would like to try something from all the countries, you should try the “red hot buffet” witch is this big buffet with food from all over the world – so if you are very hungry and like a good evening with lots of food there you must go then. And if you are to good but cheap fast-food you must try the pizza express. = =