Cathedral Gardens

Cathedral Gardens comes alive with free entertainment for all, including circus skills, live dancing and music. Food and drink will be available, and you’ll have the chance to meet the Climate Change Mythbuster.

In 2020, artists and engineers began building amazing structures that put environmental sustainability at the heart of a new artistic vision for the Parade. This year, those floats and costumes will finally be seen:

A gondola made from scrap metal, a train powered by pedal power rather than fossil fuels, the iconic bridges of Castlefield reimagined as gardens in the sky. They join the Loom, which celebrates our weaving heritage, and the Climate Change Mythbuster, which aims to debunk some popular myths about what we can do in the face of the climate emergency.

We welcome new groups of children and young people in 2022:Our Year. Their visions of the future will help us respond to the challenges we face: to reduce our carbon footprint, and to increase biodiversity by looking after all of nature, including the ants – and we promise you plenty of ants.

Art can help us by offering a vision of the city as we would like it to be – powered by a strong sense of community. The Parade represents what happens when people come together in small acts of optimistic collective endeavour. Despite COVID-19 and the threats to the environment, this is still an amazing world, and Manchester is an amazing city. Let’s look after it and one another, and today let’s also celebrate the diverse communities who live, work and play within it.

Liz Pugh, Walk the Plank’s Creative Producer