A new exhibition explores the magic of early-morning walks at the Portico

A brand-new exhibition coming to the Portico will showcase a colourful collaboration between two Northern artistic powerhouses from opposite sides of the Pennines.

Ahead of The Songs The Morning Sang, Poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan and photographer Andrew Brooks took up a year-long creative correspondence, inspired by the daily whimsical tweets made by Ian on his pre-dawn morning strolls, which became a ritual during the first COVID lockdown.

Inspired by this, Brooks set out on his own series of early-morning walks. Leaving his home at 5am each day with his camera, the photographer took hundreds of pictures within two miles of his front door.

After each walk, Brooks then shared his pictures with McMillan, who responded to the images of his choice, building narrative into each with an unexpected micro story.

The end result, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, is a series of 25 magical pieces, each the symbiosis of Andrew’s image and Ian’s lyrical response, which will be displayed at the Portico from Thu 5 Jun – Sat 27 Sep as part of Manchester Festival of Libraries.

A second string to the collaboration saw Brooks and McMillan explore the Portico’s extensive collections of mostly 19th-century books to create found poetry and collages. With over 25,000 to choose from, they focused on themes relating to walking and light.

With McMillan selecting the words, Brooks handpicked images from unrelated books that, when put together, created new meanings and purpose for books that perhaps had remained unopened for decades.

On Sat 14 June, McMillan and Brooks are inviting people to join them for the first World Early Stroll Day and kickstart their morning by documenting a mindful local walk. Creative responses are encouraged in words, pictures, sound recordings, drawings and any other art form, and can be shared on socials with the hashtag #WorldEarlyStrollDay.

A series of workshops connected to the exhibition will be run by poet Jo Bell with young people’s mental health charity 42nd Street in Manchester and ARC (Arts For Recovery in the Community) in Stockport. The resulting work will feature in a slideshow as part of the exhibition.

Brooks said: “Reading Ian’s early stroll tweets has become part of my morning routine and is an inspiring start to the day. Knowing someone’s already been out there responding to the world and creating shows to us that a day is full of possibilities and new ideas.

“This call-and-response project is based on the morning walk around each of our local streets. The glimpsed details in Ian’s writing share a sense of strangeness in the everyday and feel like snapshots of the world.

“I use these written snapshots as inspiration for how I photograph the streets near where I live in New Mills. Then it’s fascinating to see how Ian responds in his writing, what he pulls out of these photographs, building on the half-seen ideas and images I couldn’t quite put into words.”

McMillan added: “Every morning I get up at 5am and go for my early stroll, always taking the same route around Darfield, the village near Barnsley where I’ve always lived.

“For me, as for many people, this is the best time of the day. Nothing much has happened yet and it feels like almost anything might happen.

“Then I tweet about what I’ve seen; five sentences, five observations, five new ways of seeing and thinking. Always the same stroll, always new ways to describe it. The tweets are like tiny poems or stories, or essays on life in the 21st century in an unremarkable part of the world.

“So when Andrew and I started thinking about a collaboration in 2023, early strolls seemed like an obvious and shining choice. Andrew would go on his own strolls and I would make tiny poems from his images; it meant that I would have to think harder because I was outside the A to Z that I’ve known since childhood.”

The Songs The Morning Sang comes to the Portico this June. A free opening event is being held on Thu 5 Jun, which you can book below.