Salford is a city that has always faced the challenge of being overshadowed by its bigger, older, more commercialised neighbour. Community engagement and cultural happenings are central to the way the city works, through communities around organisations like Dancing with Dementia and the artist hub at Islington Mill. This year Salford celebrates one hundred years since it was officially granted city status. Over the course of 2026, Salford City Council has held many cultural activities for the city’s centenary through Your Salford 100 (including Contemporary Narratives, reviewed in Corridor8 here). Collaboration is at the heart of the programme, bringing together residents, artists and arts organisations to showcase the people that inhabit every borough.
Salford Everywhere is a collaborative project between artist Matthew Rosier and arts organisation From the Other, widely known for their music festival Sounds From The Other City. The outcome is a forty-five-minutevideo portrait, capturing the movement of 1553 Salfordians across 150 different community groups, including church groups, posties and football clubs. The film had its world premiere this October, when it was presented as an awe-inspiring projection onto two iconic buildings in central Salford over the course of two evenings.
At the Maxwell Building on Salford University’s campus, the projection was presented with a soundtrack created by Salford based DJ and composer AFRODEUTSCHE, featuring live arrangements from composer Michael Betteridge, performed by Pendleton Sixth Form Choir and brass band Eccles Borough Band. It also featured spoken word from Lynn Walton, speaking about first-hand Salfordian experience.
Simultaneously, a silent projection shone over Salford City Shopping Centre, allowing viewers a chance to encounter the work in a different environment, accompanied here only by Salford’s own cityscape bustle. These locations were chosen by Rosier as spaces that locals navigate every day. As an architecture graduate, choosing locations that are contextually relevant to the project is important to his practice, and Salford Everywhere projects Salfordians onto familiar public sites at monumental scale.
The entrance to the Maxwell installation led the public down an illuminated path between the River Irwell and the Maxwell Building, introducing an ambient soundscape of site-specific field recordings in ‘Sound Path Along the River Irwell’ (2026), recorded by sound artist Hayley Suviste. This soothing introduction on the way in provided a serene start to the main event, creating a palpable sense of wonder in the crowd.
At the bottom of Peel Park, people came together with food and drinks from pop-up traders, reminiscent of a Bonfire Night gathering. With the Maxwell Building perched on the hillside of Peel Park, it provided a grassy plinth for the work to sit atop. Before the projection started, participants in the film could collect a ‘Salford Everywhere’ badge of honour provided by the project, and I had a chance to chat with Rosier while anticipation grew in the dimly lit surroundings, everybody eagerly awaiting the beginning of the spectacle.
Through the pockets of chatter and laughter, the recorded voice of the late Rob Dunford, poet and longtime broadcaster on Salford City Radio, introduced us to the start of the show and the crowd fell silent, still surrounded by darkness. Next came New Order’s song ‘Blue Monday’, and the three-section projection lit up the side of the building like an enormous TV set. Here was a diverse snapshot of Salford’s population traversing the building’s walls, from schoolchildren at Bridgewater Primary School holding hands and skipping to the beat, to people from the Xinhua Chinese Association and junior world powerlifting champion Tiffany Pilnikova. All the participants represented their role in the community with banners, personal objects and uniforms. The atmosphere was elated, the crowd loving to see their friends, family members and neighbours moving with sprightly joy on the big screen.
Rosier explained to me how the dance organisation he collaborated with, Company Chameleon, created a relaxed atmosphere when they were filming, and how, through workshopping the choreography with the film’s participants, they enabled everyone’s self-expression. Participants were given a beat to move to, and were encouraged to let loose in front of the camera. Between characteristic twirling, marching and dancing, the exchange became an authentic, playful, celebratory portrait of Salford.
When Rosier and From the Other were locating groups for the film during the research phase, they travelled through every borough of Salford to find out whomakes up the city as a whole. He told me that the overwhelming feeling among participants was that those on the outskirts of the city did not feel as connected to Salford as those in the centre did, so this project aimed to rekindle the suburbs with what’s happening in the centre and showcase city-wide pride.
Rosier’s past work Berwick Parade (2025) featured projection as a main form, so this medium isn’t new to him. He explained that projection felt like the only way to produce something ambitious that has a lasting meaning. He has undertaken a previous project in Salford, Navvies in 2022, a community commemoration of the 17,000 labourers who dug the shipping canal. With Salford Everywhere, it’s the scale of this work that gives it its sense of pride and differentiates it from his other works. Rosier mentioned that he’s not interested in the boundaries of digital as a medium, but he uses projection as a tool to create meaning for the communities he works with.
Throughout the forty-five-minutes, attendees unapologetically cried, laughed, cheered and sang alongside the artwork. Everyone swayed along to the many sections of music, consumed with pride and connection to their peers. Salford Everywhere provided space to pause and allowed an opportunity to be in the moment, sharing the joy of the performers, and there were many blissful moments witnessing the connections being made. Seeing workers of Salford Royal Hospital, who have serious responsibility in the community, enjoying themselves on the projection felt like a sigh of relief in such a fast-paced world. A dignified, teary-eyed reminder of the people who are working in the public sector every day, deserving their moment to be celebrated. Salford is everywhere, and it’s not just because of Lowry paintings or The Smiths’ lyrics. It’s the pride of place felt for a space that is home and what’s happening in the here and now. That night, everyone understood what it means to be a Salfordian.
Matthew Rosier: Salford Everywhere, Peel Park and Salford Shopping Tower, Salford, 9-10 October 2026.
Charlotte Holt is a multidisciplinary artist based in Manchester.
This review is supported by From the Other.
Published 27.10.2026 by Jazmine Linklater in Reviews
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