Northern Quarter favourite UNITOM to launch second bookstore & exhibition space

Much-loved Northern Quarter indie bookstore and coffee shop UNITOM has announced plans for a second city centre site.

Plans for the new space, which will launch in Manchester’s creative St John’s neighbourhood, include two brand-new concepts.

UNITOM Kiosk, designed and built in collaboration with Display Only from Stockport, will operate from the front of the new site. A compact version of their Stevenson Square flagship store, the Kiosk will showcase the ‘greatest hits’ from their wider book, magazine and lifestyle brand selection.

With a nod to their new, immediate neighbours – Everyman, Clints, Permanent Orbit, Side Street and Tartuffe – they will include publications that focus on cinema, fashion, food and music, alongside a selection dedicated to Manchester heritage as they sit on the old Granada Studios site in the ABC building. The Kiosk will also act as a coffee stop, providing a rotating selection of delicious roasts from Dark Arts coffee.

The second concept – UNITOM Projects – will take over the upper back level of the site, creating a new exhibition space dedicated to contemporary visual culture. The project space will house around six rotating exhibitions a year, and provide a dedicated space to nurture emerging Manchester-based visual artists, curators, and the creative community.

UNITOM Projects will launch with Goof City, a solo exhibition by Manchester School of Art graduate Mary Lou Lawless-Gill.

Goof City takes its title from The Beat Generation concept coined by poet and activist Ed Sanders. First introduced in his 1963 Poem from Jail, it describes an imagined, anarchic and peaceful society, a warless “city on the hill” centred on laughter, art, and community, often linked to New York’s East Village and Lower East Side.

The exhibition brings together a body of work that explores urban life through constructed scenes that sit between memory, observation, and fiction.

UNITOM Kiosk and UNITOM Projects will officially open to the public on Fri 5 Jun.