Exhibition: Project[ed] Voices. 2014

Marshall, K. Project[ed] Voices, 2014. MMU, Manchester, 13/11/14 – 21/12/14

The exhibition was very well recieved and was extended by a further 3 weeks due to it's popularity.

Project and Curated Exhibition held at Manchester Metropolitan University to highlight the threat of closure to the Visual Resources Centre, MMU and the potential disposal of the slide collections there in. A total of some 300,000 slides.


Project asked for participants to visit the VRC and make a selection of their choice from the slide collections writing a short response to be exhibited in the exhibition.

Responses were poetic, thought provoking, poignant and occasionally militant. It brought together 34 individuals; a wide variety of art and design academics, researchers and research fellows, Directors of Studies and UG and PG students in the first action of a sustained campaign to protect the slide collections and try to prevent the closure of the Centre.

As a result of the campaign, which included 3 exhibitions, 2 conferences, 4 public lectures, 3 journal articles, 1 online participatory online artwork, multiple social media campaigns and an unyielding campaign of emails and communication, in July 2016 the slide collections were successfully transferred to MMU's Special Collections. The Visual Resources Centre was closed to the detriment of the current and future research community losing its dedicated Visual Resources Curator, John Davis. The collections are now looked after by Special Collections and can now be visited by appointment.