Held on 12 September 2026, the concept, in a nutshell, was we’re all nature and we’re all ‘the folk’: now let’s act like it!

Alongside searching for examples of animal and plant-life—both renegade and cultivated—throughout the city, we also experienced guerilla performances from local folk artists, Stephanie Besford West, Dom Dudill and Hardeep Sahota representing clog dancing, Irish trad music and bhangra—traditions which are similarly grassroots and resilient.

We carried a banner using reclaimed fabrics, featuring a political caricature of the female Belle Alliance protestors, involved in the radical-reform movement leading up to the Peterloo Massacre and walkers brought their houseplants with them to march in interspecies solidarity. I dressed in the guise of ‘Fred the Red’, the Manchester Red Devil, whose inauspicious 20th-century origins were re-imagined as an 'ancient' folk archetype.

Photography credits: Tilo Reifenstein

Commissioned by Castlefield Gallery