SIDETRACKS & DETOURS Sunday 9th August 2026: Town Poet Laureate Sammy Weaver looks back on her year of laureatship and Rochdale shapes its future.

all across the arts

news, previews & reviews published by Steve Cooke

and passed on by sidetracks & detours

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING

what the next decade might hold

news by Steve Cooke

What change would you most like to see in the Creative Arts in Rochdale Borough over the next ten years?

Round Here is an open invitation for people across Rochdale Borough to share their ideas, hopes and ambitions for the future. Whether you’ve got one big idea, a small change you’d love to see, or you’re simply curious about what other people are saying, there’s a place for you. You can share ideas, vote on others, pin a suggestion to the map or leave a voice note. It’s already sparking conversations across the borough.

I see this as a great opportunity for the creative arts community to use its voice and influence the future.

The creative arts in Rochdale are going from strength to strength following the highly successful year as GM Town of Culture and anticipation of possibly becoming UK Town of culture 2027. We have our wonderful, award winning Town Hall and soon to be reopened a refurbished and reimagined Touchstones. Our creative writing and art workshops are flourishing. Classical music of the highest quality is readily available in iconic venues. Regular readers of this column will be fully aware of these and many more creative arts riches on our doorstep.

The Touchstones project forms a key part of the establishment of a creative district in Rochdale town centre, which included the refurbishment of Rochdale Town Hall, the new town hall square, the Fire Up digital and creative co-working space, new artist workspaces on Richard Street as well as new public art, signage and marketing. 

This opportunity offers not a consultation. Not a survey with twenty tick boxes to choose from and a “we’ll be in touch.” Round Here is an open invitation for people to add different perspectives and help shape what comes next for Rochdale, together.

This isn’t necessarily about starting from scratch either. It’s about building on the incredible work, relationships and ideas that already exist across the borough, while making space for even more people to get involved for the good of the place.

Round Here is hosted by For Generations To Come and brought to life by the Our Future team, alongside partners The Ogden Trust, Rochdale AFC and Rochdale AFC Community Trust.

At the heart of it all is a simple message.

I believe the best future for Rochdale will be shaped by the people and organisations who care deeply about it and are ready to explore new possibilities together. No one person can do this alone.

Cameron Ogden, Co-Chairman, Rochdale AFC

Rochdale’s future will be shaped by the people who care about the Borough.

Over the past year, through For Generations To Come, the Our Future team has spent time across the borough meeting people, listening to what matters, and seeing first-hand the amazing work already happening in communities.

Through those conversations, one message came up again and again. There’s lots of great work happening, but people don’t always know what others are doing, or how they can get involved. A sentiment echoed across the creative arts community.

That’s exactly why Round Here exists.

It brings together ideas, conversations and opportunities from across Rochdale Borough, making it easier to discover what’s already happening, and will connect people who care about the same things, and help move good ideas forward together.

Every idea and experience shared helps build a bigger picture of what matters most to people across Rochdale Borough. Some might inspire local action; others might connect people who care about the same things. Together, they point towards the future people want to build.

There are three simple ways to get involved.

Whether you want to suggest something new, support someone else’s idea, explore what people across Rochdale are talking about, or just see where the conversation takes you, there’s a place for you. Round Here is available in different languages too, so language doesn’t need to be a barrier.

1) Vote and share ideas

Browse ideas from across the borough, support the ones that matter most to you, or add your own.

2) Drop a pin on the map

Show where you’d like to see change happen and why that place matters to you.

3) Record a voice note

If writing isn’t your thing, that’s absolutely fine. Share your thoughts in your own words, in your own voice.

More than just an online conversation

You’ll also find the For Generations To Come team out and about in communities across the borough through Let’s Talk About conversations and at local community events.

Let’s help spread the word

What change would you most like to see in Rochdale Borough’s creative arts over the next ten years?

Say it simply. Say it honestly. Say it your way.

Do you know someone who’d like to be part of this conversation? Please share Round Here with them.

Please Join the conversation, let’s be heard.

If you’d like to help spread the word, host a conversation, or simply find out more about getting involved, they’d love to hear from you.

ask at your library for contact details or look for the round here web site or blog

DAVID THRELFALL TO PLAY KING LEAR

The Royal  Exchange Theatre Manchester

preview by Steve Cooke

I am tingling with anticipation of David Trelfall appearing in a reimagining of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, King Lear.

‘You see how full of changes his age is’

Shakespeare’s most elemental tragedy charts a kingdom where power corrupts, families become enemies and prosperity devolves into war. At its centre is the mind of a man who can no longer understand what it means to be human.

Lear is a searing portrait of a king unable to distinguish truth from lies. As the storm rises and night falls, language, identity and meaning break down completely.

This reimagining of Shakespeare’s masterwork is adapted and directed by Matthew Dunster, who returns for his sixth engagement at the Royal Exchange, in a unique and emotionally charged take on one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

Book now

Prices

Standard Tickets from £12* [* All orders will be subject to a fee of £2.00.]

Visit: royal exchange theatre web site

King Lear Friday 2 October  – Sunday 15 November  2026

Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann’s Square,

Manchester M2 7DH

David Threlfall is best known for playing Frank Gallagher in Channel 4’s series Shameless, he also directed several episodes of the show. In April 2014, he portrayed comedian Tommy Cooper in a television film entitled Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This. In 2014, he starred alongside Jude Law in the thriller Black Sea. In 2024 he played Paul Peveril in the six-part BBC drama Nightsleeper.

For his role in Nicholas Nickleby, he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1980, which was followed by a second nomination in the Best Actor category in 2006 for Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. His role in Paradise Postponed (1986) earned Threlfall a nomination for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. In 2022, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance in the Martin McDonagh play Hangmen.

I for one can’t wait to see what he makes of Lear!

Ethan Loch, Christoph Altstaedt

& the Carers of Greater Manchester

preview by Steve Cooke

As part of their Here We Are Festival, Manchester Camerata returns to home – The Monastery, Manchester for a classical concert that connects music across nearly 800 years and explores what happens when composers break the rules.

It begins with Pérotin’s Viderunt Omnes, a hypnotic soundworld from the Middle Ages that still feels radical today. From there, move through shifting ideas of time, harmony and listening, including Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question, where strings, solo trumpet and woodwinds inhabit completely different worlds.

At the centre of the concert is a new work by Alan Williams, created with and inspired by carers from across Greater Manchester, a piece rooted in real voices and lived experience, shaped with friends at The University of Salford.

They’re also welcoming back pianist Ethan Loch, Artistic Partner, for his fourth appearance with Manchester Camerata and second in the Great Nave of The Monastery, joining conductor Christoph Altstaedt for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 – the work that marked Beethoven out as a composer determined to do things differently.

The programme closes with Terry Riley’s In C, a landmark of minimalism built from simple repeating patterns that gradually shift and evolve, inviting performers and listeners into a shared sense of time and space.

check web site for ticket details.

TOAD LANE CONCERT

A selection of songs from Britain, Broadway and France and Italy

Review byDr. Joe Dawson

This lyrical Toad Lane Concert at St Mary in the Baum was the 1,194th since taking over from Rochdale council in 2001.

Tim Kennedy began his musical career singing for the late Queen Elizabeth II, as a treble at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and was then a music scholar at Winchester College. He spent his gap year performing at Truro Cathedral, then studied music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He has since been based in Manchester for more than twenty years pursuing a varied freelance career. His singing work is mainly as afreelance tenor soloist in recitals and oratorio, but he also works as a piano accompanist, organist and vocal coach; he is a staff accompanist for singers at the Royal Northern College, Manchester.

Two appealing French songs, by Nadia Boulanger and her teacher, Gabriel Fauré, were contrasted by two robust Welsh numbers (in English) by Trevor Evans and Rhys Jones.

Carol’s second solo was a delightful salon piece simply entitled ‘Friends’ by Joe Hisaishi.

The plaintive ‘A brown bird singing’ by Haydn Wood and an impassioned plea, ‘Elëanore’, by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor took us to a pair of Lerner and Loewe songs: ‘There but for you go I’ (Brigadoon) and ‘On the street where you live’ (My Fair Lady) admirably suited to Tim’s persuasive light tenor voice. 

This had been a beautiful selection of British song with soupçons of France, Italy and Broadway. All we needed was iced tea (or Pimm’s) and cucumber sandwiches without the crusts. 

• The Queen’s Award-winning Toad Lane Concerts
• Every Wednesday at 12.30pm
• Entrance fee is £6
• Grade 1 listed church of St Mary in the Baum, Toad Lane, Rochdale
• Contact 01706 648872 for further information.

WEAVING WORDS

Sammy Weaver looks back on her year

by Steve Cooke

 When a year ago it was announced that we had got a Poet Laureate many said: A Poet Laureate? Rochdale? 

A year later and Sammy Weaver has not only emphatically answered the doubters but proved that a Poet Laureate should be a permanent fixture in Rochdale and in every town across the UK!

 Through her workshops and performances she has both encouraged and enabled  people to find and use their voice and massively changed attitudes towards poetry from ‘don’t get it’ to ‘wow that’s amazing’.

In achieving this Sammy worked with people across the whole borough, from ten to eighty years old, from all our diverse communities and from the barely literate to established writers. Many of their poems can be read alongside her own work and that of our young poets in residence  Sasha Mostafa, 18, and 25-year-old Alende Amisi, in  published anthologies, Weaving Words and Poems To Change The World.

I caught up with Sammy as her term as Poet Laureate came to its conclusion to get her take on her year in office.

What is undeniable is time spent in her company is always a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Her genuine warmth and enthusiasm light up her surroundings and the people in her presence, as experienced by many across our town.

Sammy (below) started by sharing her personal highlights:

”I chose to go into HMP Buckley Hall, it wasn’t really part of the project, but I am passionate about rehabilitation and changing the tone of prisons. Following the workshops the guys went on to create their own creative writing group within the prison.”

“The workshops with primary school children got  them into local  libraries, for many their first time! It felt like a magical session every time. We had whole year groups and classes so that it wasn’t just kids that like and were good at writing but those who thought they were no good at all, low in confidence and that it wasn’t for them. Those who wanted to play football and not sit down and write. I worked one to one with some of them to get into their world and discover what gets them going which led them into writing their first ever poems.”

“Mentoring Sasha and Alende, two very different poets. Alende’s poems reach a wide audience with his tone and generous use of language , his poems really build compassion. Sasha can be very surprising, coming at things in oblique ways, making ordinary things extraordinary. Seeing them grow across the year has been really amazing. I had done lots of workshops before, but one-to-one mentoring was new for me “

What is difficult to convey in writing is just how enthusiastic and rightly proud she is of the outcomes and legacy of her year in and amongst the people of Rochdale.

I asked her what she had learned over her time as a vital cog in our year as GM Town of Culture.

“I already knew Rochdale quite well but Heywood and Middleton very little. I got to know each area and found that they are very different. It was fascinating, especially linking up with different community groups. I learned that the whole borough though has a real grass roots, caring feel, completely at odds with its portrayal in the media. When I mentioned Rochdale to family and friends, they tended to remember bad news stories which is not at all representative.”

“I felt that this whole project spoke to Rochdale’s rich history of pioneering and co-operation. I was struck again and again by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.’

“Rochdale was on fire through this year as Town of Culture, every week bringing something new such as the mural festival and FAB, the kids festival and the family picnics in the park”

“ A local love of green spaces, reclaimed spaces linked to the industrial past, people taking loving care of little stretches of industrial land that in the past would have been spoils heaps or piles of rubble. I especially experienced this with a walking group in Middleton, not seeing rose gardens but beauty growing out of rubble.”

 “Seeing diversity celebrated such as in a workshop with the New Pioneers in Spotland , some of whom had English as their second or third language, with kids and babies in the room, we had a great session with a group of people many of whom had had troubled experiences who had built a home here but also had experience multiple homes on their journey.”

What next for Sammy?

I was delighted by the revelation that she is currently working on compiling a full collection of her poems  for the first time as well as working on themes for new poems.

Before rushing off to deliver her next workshop, this time in Huddersfield, she underlined the power of poetry.

“Mentoring Sasha and Alende, (ight, with Sammy and Mayoress Janet Elmsley) two very different poets. Alende’s poems reach a wide audience with his tone and generous use of language , his poems really build compassion. Sasha can be very surprising, coming at things in oblique ways, making ordinary things extraordinary. Seeing them grow across the year has been really amazing. I had done lots of workshops before, but one-to-one mentoring was new for me.“

“Poetry is a bridge, it builds compassion, metaphor itself builds compassion, a bridge linking two distinct things into a similarity, it’s not just for wedding and funerals but for every day. It is about expressing yourself, not about having perfect grammar or strict structure like rhyme or metre or sonnets, it is literally about expressing things as you see them! Poetry can create immense clarity and also hold immense confusion, the whole complexity of being human, a mirror to the emotions we all experience, expressing it so other people can feel that hurt as it puts into words what they have been feeling. Language always falls short but the humbling attempt to do it is a bridge, a connector.”

all across the arts recommend following Sammy on her instagram platform, and to keep in touch with the arts and culture scene in Rochdale you might like to check out the Rochdale Creates site. You can also follow my (Steve Cooke´s) all across the arts weekly column in The Rochdale Observer. You can also follow our AATA column in the Rochdale Observer, InYourArea, and across social media. You can also buy copies of the two anthologies, Weaving Words and Poems To Change The World in Rochdale Town Halland Libraries across the borough.

(c) Steve Cooke

Steve Cooke and I enjoyed (and endured) a five year partnership, growing the all across the arts coverage and during that time we often took that news to community radio sites and sometimes even to BBC stations. Steve´s energy and obvious love of the town and its arts scene made him a well-loved and respected figure in the community. he seamlessly took over form my original all across the arts partner, the late Robin Parker.  When I later retired to live here on Lanzarote Steve and I immediately agreed that he would continue collating the long-established all across the  arts , news, previews, interviews and reviews policy and that I might try to establish a similar outlet, under a new name in Lanzarote. In the eleven years I have been here I have written for glossy magazines like Lancelot and Gazzette Life Lanzarote and have also taken occasional stories on to Monster Radio, an English language radio station in Tias. Seven years ago I launched the daily sidetracks & detours blog that now runs as a monthly publication with occasional editions of special news.

Because of the synergy shared with Steve Cooke and myself, and between all across the arts with sidetracks & detours we hope that articles, such as the above piece, can also be enjoyed by sidetracks & detours readers, in places as widespread as the USA, Egypt, Norway, South Korea, France, Spain and The Canary Islands.

I have followed the course of Sammy Weaver´s year, somewhat vicariously perhaps, through Steve´s diligent and enthusiastic reporting and I really hope that our synergy might introduce her name to new readers, as well as shaping the evolution of Rochdale as a town of culture.

We don´t want to jump on any bandwagons and we definitelñy don´t want to rain on Rochdale´s parade but we do feel thaty Rochdale can become a town of culture in its own right, but it would be wonderful if that ambition were to be endorsed in some way.

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 16^th AUGUST 2^nd 2026

Michael: a film about art for arts´sake ?

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 23^rd august 2026

Buddy Mondlock is a songwriter !

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 30^th AUGUST 2026

Too Darn Hot: live jazz

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 6^th SEPTEMBER 2026

Canary Cruising,…cool

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 13^th SEPTEMBER 2026

secretly recorded live gigs legitimised on line?

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 20^th SEPTEMBER 2026

Waiting For Godot and Music At Lunchtomes

SIDETRACKS & DETOURS SUNDAY 27^th SEPTEMBER 2026

r.i.p. David Alan Coe, songwriter and unreliable narrator