How artists are tracking environmental change through poetry, film and sound

As Elaine, an artist in her 80s, stood at her window in north Manchester, she noticed new apartment blocks dominating the nighttime skyline: “The moon is no longer in view; I have to crane my neck out of the window in order to see it. Or to see the reflection of the moon.”

I have been meeting with the Many Hands Craft Collective – a group of older artists, knitters and poets – most Tuesdays for almost a year. The group has been gathering at the community room in Victoria Square, Manchester, for over a decade.

They have been reflecting on Manchester’s massive building boom as Victoria North – Britain’s largest regeneration project – transforms their neighbourhood with 15,000 new homes. City centre construction is also reshaping skylines they’ve known for decades.

Together, we have created a film tracking how urban regeneration transforms their world. The film explores their relationship with the elements through shifting light, redirected wind and changing rain.

People who have lived here for decades – reading wind patterns, tracking seasonal light, noticing atmospheric shifts – hold memories that city planners cannot see. Residents’ observations also reveal how wildlife experience urban change – birds, insects and nocturnal animals are all affected by altered light and wind.

Construction alters wind, blocks views of the moon and stars, and changes the subtle conditions residents have learned to read over lifetimes. Observations from these artists show that heritage is not just about preserved buildings or recorded rivers, but about the knowledge people carry.

As a film-maker and sound artist, I study the connections between people and the natural world. In 2008, when Manchester City Council rehoused my 82-year-old grandmother after she had lived in the same house for 60 years, she wrote poetry to process her loss.

“Bodies, not walls, carry memories,” she wrote. Her words inspired The Flowering (2020), my first poetic documentary exploring urban regeneration through the memories the body holds. This influenced my research into how cities transform.

In Manchester, the River Irk flows through Victoria North. New riverside properties rise while the river itself needs care. For two centuries it powered mills, was contaminated by dye works, then was eventually culverted (channelled into underground pipes, hidden from view). Yet the river flows on, and so does the memory it carries.

The artists at Many Hands carry intergenerational knowledge about how this urban environment has changed. Our conversations about riverside properties blocking sunlight led the group to reflect on how construction changes light in their own streets. Views of the moon disappeared, high-rise buildings shifted wind and rain, and the sound of water tapping against windows stopped.

My PhD project analysed atmospheric transformations alongside the river itself: how these numerous new buildings and developments change homes as well as waterways.

As climate change forces cities to adapt, observations accumulated over decades – how rain moves through streets, how wind patterns shift, how rivers sound differently with the seasons – could inform climate-responsive urban design. Yet regeneration often displaces the very people who carry this knowledge before it is even recognised.

Materials and memory

To retrace the Irk’s history, we worked with clay and natural materials from the river – silt, stones, industrial brick fragments. An artist called Dot recalled seeing blue pigeons from old dye works, with feathers stained from chemical colours.

As the clay stiffened as it dried, conversations turned to how cities are built. Victorian brick from the 1890s still stands solid, while new apartment exteriors are designed for 20-year lifespans.

Poetry emerged from the conversations: “Sand, soil, silt, leaves, clay, decaying plants, coal and dust, ash chemical waste” and “human hearts holding on to heritage, ours. Made of natural materials, hands, rain, wind, sunlight”. Different perspectives recognise people and rivers as bodies carrying memory through change.

Sound and poetry

As a group, we reconstructed waterwheels to explore how the Irk powered mills. One artist, Jean, suggested recording with hydrophones (special microphones that work underwater) in kitchen sinks. Water through household pipes connected us directly to the river, flowing through our fingertips. Playing hydrophone recordings for the first time, Jean said it sounded like being deaf – without her hearing aids, it was like being underwater.

This revealed a crucial insight: listening is shaped by our bodies. Jean’s deafness meant she heard the river differently, noticing frequencies and vibrations others might miss. Kitchen sink hydrophones create access where it did not exist, bringing culverted, fenced or distant rivers into homes through soundwaves in domestic pipes.

These conversations evolved into Two Worlds, a sound installation created with composer and sound artist Simon Knighton. This piece of sound design informs the film score and explores how people coexist with the environment. The Irk pulsates different rhythms depending on where you listen. Harsh urban concrete or gentler upstream flows are heard differently by each set of ears.

As we wrote poetry together after discussing how some long-forgotten waterways have been buried beneath streets, Rose asked: “What happens to a river when it becomes a road?”

Rose’s question lies at the heart of my research: when cities develop, what environmental knowledge disappears?

Manchester has lost multiple rivers to culverting, development and roads. Older residents carry knowledge younger generations never knew existed. As climate change requires us to expose or “daylight” culverted rivers for flood management, these memories could guide restoration.

Many Hands’ Material River, a collection of films and poetry printed onto fabric, is on display within the River Stories exhibition until March 23 2026 in Manchester Histories Hub at Manchester Central Library.

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Fiona Brehony receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).