What's On in the Arts in Rochdale Town Centre Rochdale Town Centre is looking better than I can ever remember and it promises to improve even further will the renovation of our town hall and the transformation of the surrounding area. Councillor Janet Emsley, Cabinet Member for Equalities, Safety, and Reform, said: "The town hall will become a free-to-attend visitor attraction and will be open to the public five days per week. It will feature the new Welcome Gallery which will showcase the history of the building through interactive exhibitions and in artworks and stories from communities across Rochdale. "Many of the decorative painted surfaces will have been restored and on full display in historic rooms for the public to explore, guided by volunteers who will be on hand to offer advice or answer questions. Town Hall Square will offer new, exciting opportunities for cultural and arts events and will itself feature exciting new artworks including the decorative stone carpet outside the main entrance with carved images and motifs created by a local artist.
Steve Cooke Arts Columnist
"From 2024, there will be a full public programme of events taking place within the town hall and in the new Town Hall Square. Activities will range in size and scale, everything from half term kids activities to community-led lantern parades, large-scale art installations, and programmes of cultural and creative activity that enhance curriculum needs for the borough’s children and young people."
A walk around the town centre is becoming like a visit to a rather exciting, innovative, living art gallery, with a plethora of stunning murals including the latest contribution from local artist Doodlher. Add to that live music, theatre plus of course some excellent shopping opportunities and some amazing hostelries to suit every taste and most pockets, our town centre is well worth a visit.
VISUAL ART Victoria Whittaker [Doodlher] is a Rochdale based pen artist with a passion for telling stories and sparking curiosity through her stunning paper illustrations and wall murals. Surprisingly Doodlher never received any formal art training although she almost chose Fine Art as a university course but opted for studying French. She explains that she was worried that turning her natural love for drawing into an academic pursuit could threaten its integrity: "I didn’t want it to become a chore, and I wanted to keep it on my terms. Instead, I did my French degree, and enjoyed art on the side".
She cites places, people, stories, and history as huge influences to her work, stating that she enjoys working to topical themes and sharing messages through her art. Vic has been commissioned many times to design and create mural art, both indoors and outdoors. Despite their size, these murals, like paper size artwork, all share black pen as their common feature. You can encounter her work across our town centre at: Co-operative Hub, Drake Street, Gregory Couzens Hair Studio, Bombay Brew Rochdale, The Duke of Wellington Mural and her very latest, just completed near the entrance to the Exchange Shopping Centre. Visit: doodlher.com TOUCHSTONES This autumn, all four of the gallery spaces will be taken over by Mischief, an exhibition featuring new textile art and selected pieces from the archives of New York-based queer feminist artist and designer Liz Collins and curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson. Showcasing the breadth of Collins’ work and continuing threads throughout her career to date, the exhibition will also showcase the ties to industrial making methods, from traditional and low-tech to modern hi-tech approaches, with implicit links to Rochdale’s own historic textile industry.
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