What’s on at the Portico Library
The Portico is home to an eclectic range of fantastic public events, from talks and performances to exhibitions, awards and workshops. Download our Feb to March 2025 events overview here.
Have you visited our collection?
If you have visited the exhibition, online collection, searched for books relating to folklore or East Asia, or attended an event, we invite you to complete our survey here.
It would really help with our evaluation for our funders and help us to improve access to the library.
As a thank you for completing it, you can also enter an online competition for £30 high street shopping vouchers by leaving your details at the end of the survey.
Exhibition
Echoes: China & Hong Kong voicing the collection
Echoes invites audiences to engage with the collection of the Portico Library and the communities who are reclaiming the colonial narrative written and illustrated in the Library's books. It seeks to navigate Britain’s complex colonial relations with China and Hong Kong, by centering the voices of the five Critical Friends who have co-created the exhibition. Bruce Lai, Deborah Ng, Jasmine Gardner, Jessie Tam, and Yichao Shi reflect on and distill their responses to the historic collection. Their exploration has honed in on Manchester’s Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora. Their 'reading' of the collection delves into retention and adaptation of identity, place and purpose, particularly through language, landscape, and calendar customs such as Lunar New Year celebrations.
The exhibition features commissioned artistic responses from Critical Friends and local filmmakers: which encapsulate a counternarrative to the Victorian collection. These include:
1. ‘I think you’re wrong . . . England isn’t racist, I never hear any racism’ – A white man from Essex named Andrew, 2020, by Jasmine Gardner
2. ‘Mother Tongues, by Matthew Lingard
3. ‘A Cloud Was Fallen from the Sky’ by Jessie Tam
The exhibition has also been supported by the expertise of Walter Fung, Maxine Hunter and Fang Zong.
Upcoming exhibition
'The Songs The Morning Sang’ is an exhibition by and collaboration between poet Ian McMillan and photographer Andrew Brooks. They explore the streets where they live in the early morning to capture some of the strangeness and beauty of the everyday world.
This project was Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Upcoming Events
Abbi Parcell: PhD Writer in Residence
Abbi Parcell (BA MA PGCE) is a butch writer and poet based in Manchester. She explores testimony of lived experience through auto-fictional practice. Her work explores intersections that shape personal identity, considering how internal processes intersect with external perceptions. Abbi focuses on the importance of establishing queer and in particular, lesbian histories, connections and how radical it has always been to simply exist.
She is currently a Writer in Residence at the Portico Library and is completing her PhD in Auto-fiction as Testimony at The University of Salford. Abbi has also worked with The Manchester Poetry Library, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester City of Literature, LIRG and The Poetry School London. Her poetry collection Hold Your Metaphors Accountable was released in 2023 and was published by Team Trident Press
Abbi Parcell
Black and white photograph of a young white person with dark short hair wearing glasses and a jacket
New Research Articles
Off the Shelf
Explore our Past Exhibitions
The Portico’s free public exhibitions incorporate books and materials from the Library’s collection, contemporary artworks by local and international artists and objects from partner museums and galleries. They consider the Library’s 215-year history and unique collection with its city’s 21st-century communities.