World Cotton Day & Lines of Thought
Manchester’s relationship with cotton can still be read across the city.
It is there in the mills and warehouses, the canals and railway lines, the grand civic buildings and the infrastructure that helped transform Manchester into one of the world’s most important industrial cities.
But woven into that history are much more difficult stories of colonialism, exploitation and enslavement.
This World Cotton Day, Lazerian founder Liam Hopkins joined the programme at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum to explore some of these connections through Lines of Thought – an artwork that began in one Manchester building and is now developing into something that could stretch across the city.
Where Lines of Thought began
Lines of Thought wasn’t originally conceived as a city-wide project about cotton.
The idea began in 2021, when Liam was commissioned to create a permanent artwork for independent Manchester theatre 53two.
When exploring the space and its history, Liam became interested in the idea of lines.
There were the physical lines that had shaped Manchester, canals, transport routes, industry and movement but also the lines spoken by performers, the individual journeys that brought people into the theatre and the stories that would continue to emerge from it.
Those different meanings became Lines of Thought.
The resulting installation brought together two objects with an unexpected visual relationship: the cotton shuttle and the narrowboat.
Steel boats referenced the vessels that once moved goods through Manchester’s canal network, while translucent resin shuttles contained real cotton fibres connected to the region’s textile industry.
Cotton came from local mills, while the Science and Industry Museum produced thread using its historic textile machinery specifically for the artwork.
Names and words connected with 53two could also become part of the pieces, adding individual human stories to the larger industrial narrative.
But what began as a response to one place contained an idea that could travel much further.
Following the lines beyond 53two
The more we explored Lines of Thought, the more apparent it became that these lines didn’t stop at the walls of the theatre.
The canals continued.
The cotton had travelled.
Across Manchester were mills, warehouses, waterways, institutions and communities connected to the industry.
And behind those physical connections were countless human stories.
That idea has gradually developed Lines of Thought from a site-specific artwork into a wider public art project exploring Manchester’s relationship with cotton.
The shuttle and narrowboat remain at its heart, but rather than existing together within one building, they can become markers throughout the city.
Some might be immediately visible. Others could be deliberately more hidden — discovered beneath an archway, alongside a canal or integrated into the architecture of a building.
Following them would reveal another Manchester: a network of connections that has always been there.
Why the cotton shuttle?
The cotton shuttle is a particularly important object within the project.
Small enough to hold in your hand, it represents an industry that operated on an enormous global scale.
Within Lines of Thought, some shuttles are created in translucent resin, allowing real cotton fibres to become physically embedded within the artwork. Others can be fabricated from steel, carrying engraved names, words and quotations.
The thread running through a shuttle also provides a simple metaphor for the project.
A single strand can represent a person, a journey, a memory or a story.
Bring those strands together and something much larger begins to emerge.
World Cotton Day: inviting new voices into the work
World Cotton Day at the Science and Industry Museum provided an opportunity to open that conversation further.
Liam led workshops inviting visitors to respond directly to the developing Lines of Thought project.
Participants were given outlines based on the cotton shuttle and narrowboat and asked to consider what they might place within them.
What cotton or fabric would they include?
Whose name deserves to be remembered?
What words, memories or quotations might be engraved into the artwork?
And where in Manchester should these pieces ultimately be discovered?
These contributions are important because Lines of Thought isn’t intended to present a single, neat interpretation of Manchester’s cotton history.
Manchester’s relationship with cotton encompasses extraordinary industrial innovation and transformation, but it is also inseparable from colonialism, exploitation and enslavement.
Understanding that history means following all of those threads.
Working with Keisha Thompson
The development of Lines of Thought has also brought Liam together with Keisha Thompson, Legacies of Enslavement Programme Manager, as part of the Scott Trust’s ongoing work examining these histories.
Together, Liam and Keisha have been exploring potential locations across Manchester and considering not simply where the artworks could exist, but whose stories they might carry and how those stories can be represented.
On World Cotton Day, that conversation continued beyond the workshop.
Liam joined Keisha alongside Professor Duncan Ivison, Cleo Lake and Adeola Adelakun for an evening discussion at the Science and Industry Museum exploring Manchester’s interwoven relationship with cotton and what that history means today.
Putting the story back into the city
The next stage of Lines of Thought takes the project back out into Manchester.
Potential locations are being explored across the city, from cultural institutions to canals, industrial architecture and quieter spaces that people might pass every day without considering the histories around them.
Rather than creating one large monument that asks people to come to it, Lines of Thought can become something people encounter as they move through Manchester.
One object leads to another.
One location reveals another story.
And gradually those individual fragments begin to reconnect.
One line leads to another
Perhaps the evolution of Lines of Thought mirrors the artwork itself.
One line has led to another.
A commission for a theatre led to an exploration of cotton.
A cotton shuttle led to a narrowboat.
The narrowboat led to the canals.
The canals led out into Manchester.
And following those routes revealed more places, people and stories.
What started as an artwork embedded within one Manchester building is gradually becoming a way of exploring the city itself.
World Cotton Day isn’t the conclusion of that journey.
It’s another line leading somewhere new.
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