Dr Bill Longshaw
Honorary research fellow, Department of History and Economic History, MMU

Research interests

Bill Longshaw is a freelance exhibition curator and academic researcher who lives in Manchester. After graduating in Fine Art from Liverpool Polytechnic in 1989 he worked as an artist and part-time postman and began to develop installations that explored how the recent past has been recreated by the heritage industry. In 2000 he created the exhibition ‘Every Street an Artist’s View’ for The People’s History Museum. The exhibition was the culmination of a year-long project, which helped the post-war residents of one Manchester street to rediscover and celebrate their forgotten histories. ‘Every Street’ became the basis of an MA in History of Art and Design at MMU and a dissertation City Visiting, a Memoir (2000), which considered how working class communities have been represented in museums and heritage sites. Longshaw’s next project was a large-scale commission for The Lowry in Salford. The exhibition ‘1962’ was inspired by reminiscences from Manchester and Salford residents who had lived through the slum clearance era. Eventually in late 2002 an entire gallery at the Lowry was transformed into a life-size early 1960s street, presented entirely in black, white and shades of grey (see below).

In 2007 Longshaw curated ‘The Myth of the North’ for the Lowry. This large-scale exhibition integrated full-scale sets, including a terrace street and a section of Blackpool promenade, with paintings, photographs and film to show how the English North has been portrayed and mythologised since the early 1900s. The ideas behind ‘The Myth of the North’ also formed the basis of a PhD thesis, People Myth and Museums, Constructing ‘The People’s Past’ and White Working Class Salford 1945-2000”, which was completed at MMU in July 2008.

williamlongshaw@msn.com