The Manchester Pop Trail: a city’s music, drawn
Paul Wilde has been drawing Manchester’s music for years, in a long-running column for the Manchester Evening News. From 3 to 24 September 2026 the drawings come together on the lower ground floor of Central Library, in the Manchester Histories Hub.
The exhibition runs from the Blues through Punk to Britpop, and it is as interested in the rooms as in the names. Rehearsal spaces, dancehalls, clubs, community halls: the places that made the records possible, many of them long closed. Some of the stories reach back to 1929. Hand-drawn illustrations hang alongside ceramic pieces worked up from the same research.
The exhibition opens on the evening of Thursday 3 September. Paul Wilde is present on Saturdays and Wednesdays, 10:00–14:00.
Practical information
When: 3–24 September 2026. Opening event Thursday 3 September, 18:00–20:00.
Where: Manchester Histories Hub, Central Library, LG Floor, Manchester M2 5PD.
The artist is present: Saturdays and Wednesdays, 10:00–14:00.
Organised by: Manchester Histories.
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