Mural may mark Co-op birthplace

THIS is how a giant mural celebrating Rochdale’s role as the birthplace of the cooperative movement could look.

It could be painted on a wall at the back of the Baum pub, just yards away from the Pioneers Museum on Toad Lane.

The bright and colourful mural includes the phrases ‘Unity is strength’ and ‘Labour and wait’ - a line from a 1886 sermon by the Scottish Christian Universalist minister and poet George Macdonald bees, flowers and industrial scenes.

It’s hoped that it will also help direct visitors, who a report submitted with the planning applications states, often find it difficult to find the museum.

If approved the mural, ●●An artists’s impression of a planned giant mural at Toad Lane celebrating Rochdale’s role as the birthplace of the co-operative movement could look which is estimated to cost about £2,500 and take about a week to complete, will be painted by Manchester-based Outhouse Artists Group.

A report submitted with a planning application for the mural states: “This piece of commissioned street art was to incorporate the symbols and imagery of co-operation related to the history and heritage of the movement in Rochdale (the ‘birthplace of co-operation) as well as reflect the co-operative nature, diversity and potential of Rochdale and its people today.

“The final design includes representations of not only activities and ideals associated with the past, but those of the present as well.

“The mural had been designed to incorporate diversity of background, lifestyles and interests based on the placemaking of Rochdale as a co-operative town with its own identity within the region of Greater Manchester.”