An in-person event only. No need to sign up, just come along – all are welcome.

The Manchester Ship Canal is one of the great engineering projects in late Victorian Britain and widely regarded as transforming the economic landscape of Manchester and the wider region during the first half of the twentieth century. It remains a strategic infrastructure and has been promoted as an asset for the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ in recent years.

This talk examines the types of publicity material and market strategies deployed by the Manchester Ship Canal Company (MSCC) between the 1920s and the early 1950s in their efforts to promote the ship canal to local firms and international business and to encourage industrial growth around the docks. The talk draws upon archival research conducted in 2021, the results of which were presented in a public exhibition in Manchester Central Library during summer/autumn 2023. Much of the marketing material and original artwork exhibited was unearthed in the extensive but uncatalogued archives of the Ship Canal Company held by the Greater Manchester Record Office in Manchester Central Library.

In particular, the talk will focus empirically on the imaginative visual design and branding developed by Kenneth Brady, MSCC’s publicity chief from 1926-1939, and of skilled commercial artists, including Horace Taylor, Bert Wilson and Paxton Chadwick, who he commissioned.

The catalogue for the exhibition is available here.

About the Speaker

Martin Dodge is a Senior Lecturer in the Geography Department at the University of Manchester. He has worked at Cardiff University and University College London.

Much of Martin’s research is currently focused on the historical geography of Manchester’s transport and town planning. In 2018 he co-wrote Manchester: Mapping the City (Birlinn, 2018) and in 2022 he co-curated a public exhibition, Who Built Wythenshawe?

Martin is currently co-writing a book for the University of Manchester’s bicentenary on growth and change of the campus.