Belle Vue rides again! Another 3D student is inspired by Manchester’s ‘Showground of the World’

Manchester’s rich history continues to be a source of inspiration for 3D students!

 

Last year 3D Design 1^st Year students undertook a project about Belle Vue – once dubbed the ‘Showground of the World’ and Manchester’s nearest thing to Disneyland! The Belle Vue site along with its internationally renowned zoo, amusements, rides, and event halls closed in the 1981, nothing remains, apart from a few courses of bricks from the old entrance now part of a boundary wall to the Gala Bingo on the Hyde Road. The absence of information and the decline of this once iconic destination became a great source of fascination.

Endeavouring to make the intangible palpable, the students utilised archive resources at Chetham’s Library, Manchester, who have the original founders’ archive and huge collections of Belle Vue material, the vast amount of which is now digitised

This year 3D Design Graduate Charlotte Smith also undertook research into Belle Vue, working closely again with the archives at Chetham’s she developed a jewellery collection based on the zoo’s animal stories. Now Chetham’s Library wish to buy a piece of her work, which could itself become an artefact in their Belle Vue collection!

Thanks as ever to the wonderful staff at Chetham’s Library a truly magical place! Drop in on their blog and website, but best of all visit them yourself!

About cinba3ddesign

Creativity and Craft Production in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (CinBA) is a major new international archaeological research project. 3D Design students at Manchester School of Art are participating in this project by exploring the role that the craft maker can play in archaeological enquiry, both as practice-based researchers-investigators and as interpreters of meanings within handmade objects from the Bronze Age period.

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