NOMA is inviting everyone to come along and get involved during 2025 with a curated calendar of six ‘Happenings’ throughout the year. Happenings are a series of free events, clubs, talks, and workshops curated by Altogether Otherwise which have started this January and February with the theme of Reading and Writing.

 

The first Happening sees the city centre neighbourhood play host to all things literary, from a reading with an acclaimed novelist to a pop-up book shop and book swaps.

 

Celebrating a slower, more mindful start to the year, the first Happening of the year includes:

  • The Jot Book Shop at NOMA’s very own hobby-house, Altogether Otherwise, will be in session every Wednesday and Saturday.
  • The launch of a coffee magazine.
  • Hosting the UK launch of a book about playgrounds.
  • Hosting a reading from an acclaimed Manchester-based novelist, Glen James Brown, from his latest book, Mother Naked (Peninsula, 2024).
  • A night of performance poetry at New Century.
  • The launch a Zine archive of over 1000 self-published titles.
  •  Regular Altogether Otherwise clubs, Food Tastes Good, Wavy Wool Club, and Evening Gardening Club are all adopting a bookish bent.
  • And more.

 

Additionally, NOMA is partnering with MensRetreatsUK this February to deliver a four-week course that focuses on men’s mental health, named Write Your Purpose.

 

Starting from Monday the 3rd of February from 6pm, and continuing every following Monday in February, this new programme of free wellbeing focused workshops will be held at Altogether Otherwise and hosted by Christian Chalfont from MensRetreatsUK. The workshops encourage men to dig deep into their sense of self and purpose, asking where participants are in life right now and where they want to be. There are 20 available spaces to take part, attending each week the workshop takes place.

 

Ben Young, Founder of Altogether Otherwise and curator of the Happenings, said: “Instead of focusing on the usual grind culture and commitment to re-inventing ourselves in the New Year, NOMA’s two month focus on Reading and Writing aims to revel in the quiet, cosy moments of life. Encouraging the people of Manchester to nestle in a corner with a good book and a hot drink or put pen to paper and let imagination flow.”

 

NOMA reading and writing

 

The Happenings will continue to take over the NOMA neighbourhood throughout the year and will see the streets of NOMA come alive with activity and free-to-attend events. With lots of unmissable dates for the diary, the line-up includes: January and February’s Reading and Writing; March and April’s Sewing and Growing; May and June’s Singing and Dancing; July and August’s Eating and Drinking; September and October’s Moving and Shaking; and November and December’s Mending and Making.