Rhonda Carrier is Takethefamily’s Head of Content.
I’ve written before about the joys of ‘holidaying’ close to home, and about the pleasure of short breaks with kids. This year I’ve been out and about all over the north of England with my boys, on day-trips, overnighters or mini-breaks. With the help of our money-saving Family & Friends Railcard, the opportunities for cultural excursions within easy reach of home are almost unlimited. York, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle are all great northern cities we’ve explored together in 2011 and at very little cost.
Manchester is lucky enough to have an award-winning online magazine, Creative Tourist, published by a consortium of nine local museums and galleries who share a vision of staging “intelligent, thought-provoking and outward-looking events” and of celebrating their city at the same time. It’s been so successful that 40% of users say that it totally changed their perceptions of Manchester.
One such event was this past weekend’s Manchester Weekender, a series of one-off, intimate events that aim to “sum up the city”. The agenda for 2011 included ‘cultural provocateur’ and northerner Jarvis Cocker interviewed by DJ Dave Haslam, author of ‘Manchester, England’, a classic guide to the city’s radical and musical history. There was also a whole raft of family-oriented events, many of them free and drop-in, which meant you could take the weekend at a fairly relaxed pace, generally dropping into venues and spending as long as you wanted there depending on what snagged your interest.
One exception was the book-ahead Family Floating Day Out, part of the concurrent Manchester Food & Drink Festival. Beginning outside the waterside gastro-pub The Mark Addy (itself handy for the family-friendly Peoples’ History Museum), this boat-trip took families along the historic waterway connecting Manchester itself with Salford Quays, home to the new BBC HQ. Tables on board the boat were filled with craft materials for making paper boats and flags to wave each time we spotted one of the items listed – herons (tick), graffiti (tick), and so on. The foodie element was a currant-filled Chorley cake (a relative of the Eccles cake) to munch on as you worked. Once you’ve arrived, there’s lots of things to do at the Quays: we took the opportunity to revisit the Imperial War Museum North, where the Weekender event was a pop-up darkroom where kids could develop their own photos. Then it was home again, by return-boat or by sleek new tram.
There are few things better in life than a spot of Sunday-morning jazz, and the Weekender again came up trumps with a second chance to hear Living Story Music Ensemble’s jazz interpretation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’, which had premiered at the Manchester Jazz Festival this summer. Performed at the ever-wonderful Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), this was preceded by a puppet-making workshop during which kids could make finger-puppets of the various animal characters from the book. Although this was pitched at younger kids, my older boys (7 and 9) were transfixed by the musicians interpreting the various animals through their different instruments, and we were all still singing the catchy songs long after we’d left the museum and wandered back through town.
The Whitworth Art Gallery was the one venue we hadn’t been to at some point in the past (much to our shame). After lunch in its excellent café, The Modern Caterer, we headed for its Weekender event, Dark Drawings, which allowed us to create our own shadow projections on the gallery walls. This was part of the gallery’s current exhibition, Dark Matters (until 15 Jan 2012), a stunning show on the notions of shadow, darkness and illusion that I’ll be revisiting without the distraction of kids. Afterwards, we happened upon a ‘scientific drawing event’ based on molecular patterns that was taking part on the other side of the gallery – part of the Big Draw 2011, running nationwide for the whole of October.
These were just our choice of events, and there were dozens more, mainly free, happening all over the city all weekend. For me, it was a case of trying to find activities to suit children of different ages (my youngest son is 3), but I’ll be leaving him behind to try out another great Creative Tourist offering, the Manchester Mini Explorer (£8), a beautifully produced activity bag aimed at ages 5–10, containing 4 self-guided trails (each taking around 2hrs, one of them including Castlefield with its canals and Roman remains), plus games, puzzles, fun cards and discounts for museums and galleries. But more about the Mini Explorer in due course…
Self-catering apartments are always a good choice for a city break with kids, and Stay Manchester is a fine example within very easy reach of Piccadilly Station. The firm also has high-spec modern apartments in Liverpool, Birmingham, Dublin, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Ljubljana in Slovenia and Orlando, Florida.
See our City Breaks with Kids tips page for more on self-catering apartments and on urban getaways in general.
