A festival celebrating art and culture is set to place in Manchester this summer

A one-day festival championing art and creativity is set to take place in Manchester City Centre this summer. On Saturday, June 18, Art Fund will host Art Assembly 2022 - City as Art School, alongside a collective of Manchester's leading arts organisations.

The festival will showcase newly co-commissioned and co-created artworks and installations across the city. Art Fund - the national fundraising charity for art - has organised the event alongside some of Manchester's biggest art institutions including Castlefield Gallery, HOME, Manchester Art Gallery, The Whitworth and The Manchester College.

Eight new artworks by ten Greater Manchester artists will be dotted around the city for people to visit, illustrating how busy squares, streets, pavements and billboards all have the potential to become a place of creative learning. These works span a wide range of media, from film and painting, to textiles, performance and music.

Manchester Art Gallery will be the festival hub, hosting many of the new works including Respawn by artist Olivia Glasser, a piece which features videos of pupils from Plymouth Grove Primary School re-enacting actions that are important to them in childhood. Art and Design students from The Manchester College will work with painter and animator Parham Ghalamdar to produce large-scale paintings on canvas as well as AI-generated animations and projections, inspired by the city's art scene.

Elsewhere, participatory artist and poet Maya Chowdhry is working with students at Manchester School of Art to explore 'space as a gift' with pop-up installations inside the art gallery and in St Peter's Square. Meanwhile, students from The Manchester College and artists Anna FC Smith and Helen Mather will