CityLife

Preview: Biodiversity in Whitworth Park

Whitworth Park

June 8 onwards, 2010

A collective effort by two of the city’s biggest galleries gets under way next week to access the current biodiversity of Whitworth Park.

Manchester Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery are supported in the University of Manchester’s Archaeology Department in their plans to develop an interactive website about the park, its history and the nature that lives in its grounds.

Starting next week with two days of nature spotting, the project should lead to a three year long examination of the public park, which the university hopes will, in turn, increase use of the space as the neighbouring gallery plans its extension.

Now in its 120th year, Whitworth Park has changed considerably since it opened in 1890. Then a landscaped slice of Potter’s Fields and home to the enormous stately villa Rusholme House, the park featured a large boating lake, bandstand, observatory and covered walkways.

But in recent years, it has become a park that people use as a cut through to Oxford Road rather than sit in and enjoy.

The galleries hope their series of open days will encourage people to share their memories of the park and lead to a reappraisal of the space.

They are even carrying out a full reassessment of the park’s geography via a two-week excavation of some of the park’s lost features.

On Tuesday, then, the project begins with a late night moth and bat spotting session, and continues on Wednesday with Bioblitz and Hidden History – a full scale search of the park for mammals, birds, bugs and plants and an opportunity for visitors to share their stories with academics and curators.

A further open afternoon of fieldwork is also planned on June 21, which the public is also invited to attend.

Corinne Leader, spokesperson for Manchester Museum, says the project may also inform the museum’s planned improvements to their mammal gallery.

“There are two main reasons for this project,” she explains, “firstly, the Whitworth Art Gallery’s extension and the museum’s redevelopment of its mammal gallery next year.

“We don’t really know much about what biodiversity is in the park. We’re hoping to find plants, birds and bugs and anything else we can, and we want to work with community groups and the public to find out what everyone remembers about the park.

“With our archaeological field work, we can piece together a comprehensive history of the park.”

The university plans to use the information to create an oral history and documentary about the park, an archive of buried treasures and a website offering a virtual tour of the park, its history and its wildlife.

Visit www.manchester.museum.ac.uk/whatson/june for more details. All events are all ages, drop in and free.