In a world that often feels increasingly divided, creativity still has the rare power to bring people together. Design, art and culture remind us that collaboration and conversation can bridge language, geography and politics, and that’s exactly what I wanted to explore with my latest project: a creative exchange between Manchester and Barcelona.
I’ve just returned from Barcelona after curating an exhibition during La Mercè, the city’s annual cultural festival. For the first time ever, Manchester was chosen as its partner city, a huge honour and the perfect opportunity to showcase the creative energy that runs through both places.
My connection with Barcelona began nearly three decades ago, when I visited as an art student in the mid 1990s. The city’s warmth, design culture and attitude stuck with me. Later, as a designer in Manchester, I found the two cities shared a lot: industrial roots, proud independence, a love of football, music and creativity.
In 2013, I launched BCNMCR, a celebration of Barcelona design talent hosted in Manchester, featuring studios such as Hey and Mucho. It returned in 2014 on a bigger scale, and again in 2023, ten years later, with an exhibition and a book featuring over 60 Barcelona creatives.
I honestly thought that was where the story would end. But late last year, Marketing Manchester approached me after finding BCNMCR online. Manchester had officially been twinned with Barcelona for La Mercè, and they asked if I’d like to curate something to mark the partnership. In typical fashion, I said yes first and figured out the rest later.
Design, art and culture remind us that collaboration and conversation can bridge language, geography and politics
The brief was simple but open-ended: create connections between the two cities. I wanted to make sure those connections didn’t just happen at the event, but throughout it, before, during and after. So I came up with the idea of pairing 20 emerging creatives from Manchester with 20 from Barcelona and asking them to collaborate on a shared piece of work. Each pair would design two sides of a large printed cube, a kind of visual conversation between their cities.
Alongside the cubes, I invited a small group of established Manchester creatives to produce large textile banners. Bold, expressive and unmistakably Mancunian. These formed the backdrop of the show. Together, they created a balance between experience and experimentation, heritage and new ideas.
Watching the collaborations unfold was really inspiring. Some pairs worked closely, bouncing ideas across email and social media. Others chose to interpret the brief independently. The theme, ‘A love letter to your city’, was designed to be open to interpretation and that freedom led to a huge range of responses: abstract patterns, typography, photography, playful illustrations and intriguing textures. Some partnerships were seamless; others found creative tension. But in every case, it sparked dialogue and curiosity.
It’s fascinating to see if cities carry a shared visual language. Do Manchester and Barcelona look the same? Not really. But they share something deeper, an instinct to tell stories, to celebrate culture and community through visual expression. The outcome was less about style and more about the spirit of connection.
The best part came during the event itself. Several of the Manchester creatives travelled out to Barcelona, meeting their collaborators for the first time in person. Seeing them together, surrounded by their shared work and chatting over a beer is what the whole project was about.
As one of the participating artists, Thomas Steeles, said afterwards: “It was such a great opportunity to be part of something like this, to work on an exhibition that brought together different cultures, styles, and ways of thinking.”
For me, that’s the lasting takeaway. In an age where so much feels polarised, creativity remains a space where we can meet in the middle, collaborate, exchange and remind ourselves that connection is at the heart of good design.
