ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the new initiatives and focuses on the example of Greater Manchester, especially as it engages with the growing interconnections between museums and public health. It proposes a radically optimistic role for the future, where museums inspire civic imagination and social change. In 1886 in East Manchester, in its ‘dirtiest dreariest neighbourhood’, a pioneering philanthropist by the name of Thomas Coglan Horsfall opened a new kind of museum. The Ancoats Art Museum was an educational, social and civic experiment, with a resident Poor Man’s Lawyer, and a team called the Associates who gave advice and support to local people. Greater Manchester is arguably pursuing the most comprehensive and ambitious program of health and social care transformation in the world at the moment. Museums are at the heart of this vision, leading cultural organisations across the city to work ‘with and for, not to’ the people of Manchester.
