A lot of great bands come from Manchester. Whether you count that from the ‘Madchester’ days of the eighties or the Britpop darlings that were Oasis, and all the way back to artists like The Smiths and Joy Division, popular culture has a huge debt to the place. And it can’t be denied that they’re proud of it either.

A new British Pop Archive is set to take place at The University of Manchester, exhibiting items of great importance to popular culture over the last few decades, such as Ian Curtis’ handwritten lyrics to “She’s Lost Control“, or Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton’s archive.

Happening in the university’s John Rylands Research Institute and Library, the exhibition started off as an idea back in 2018, with the deaths of Pete Shelley and The Fall’s Mark E. Smith being an inspiration. The institute’s director, Hannah Barker, explains that “Because I’m a historian who works in archives, I remember thinking: ‘I wonder what happens if these guys had no archive.“

Part of the thinking behind it is the worry that culture from hundreds of years ago has an unfair advantage, being instantly recognised as more important than recent achievements, despite us having much more to explore of the latter.

The university’s professor of popular culture, Jon Savage, said that “it is a kind of false equivalence. It’s very easy to look at artefacts from 400 years ago and say that’s really important. What we are saying is this is important now. Maybe if more people had kept material from Shakespeare’s time it wouldn’t just be Shakespeare that we’re talking about.“

The inaugural exhibition will take place on May 19th with Mat Bancroft, Savage and Barker curating. It’s being touted as “a distinctively Manchester-flavoured exhibition, underlining why the city is the perfect home for the British Pop Archive …. it explores the vibrant cultural scene of a city that has driven innovation, creativity and social progress.“

Items relating to bands such as The Haçienda, Sex Pistols and record label Factory Records will also appear. Granada TV’s archive will be there too, with fans of Coronation Street, World in Action, Prime Suspect and The Hitman and Her being in for a treat.

However, it’s not the only time Joy Division have received recognition for their achievements recently. You can read here about a mural set up just over a week ago in Ian Curtis’ name, right in the town where he was brought up and buried – Macclesfield.