About Us

There has been a growing need for a radical community hub since Manchester’s last Social Centre, The Basement, was closed due to flooding three years ago. As the editor of the news sheet Manchester Climate Fortnightly wrote, “There has been a Basement-shaped hole in Manchester’s activism since 2007”.

A group of us hope to meet this need by buying/renting a building in central or south Manchester and turning it into a new social centre. We want to create a hub for community activity, enabling existing groups to hold meetings and events at low cost, share resources and form links with other groups, and providing an accessible means for others to become involved with these groups.

We are currently looking at historic and/or disused properties along Oxford Road, the Northern Quarter and Hulme.  If you’ve seen a building that could work for us, please get in touch!

If you would like more information about our project, please drop us an email (admin@manchestersocialcentre.org).

We’re an open group – if you would like to get involved in the project now, come along to one of our meetings.

The group organises non-hierarchically using consensus-based decision making.

We meet on Tuesdays at 6.30pm in the Bitter Suite cafe of Owens Park, Fallowfield, M14 6HD

If you’d like to volunteer on a more occasional basis (e.g. at fundraising events or once we’re open), sign up to the mailing list and we will keep in contact about volunteering opportunities.

We have  three aims:

1)  To create a space where different community, campaign and activist groups can meet, organise and share ideas.

2)  To provide an space for members of the local community to both share their issues and solutions to their problems as well as find out about connected social injustices such as climate change, environmental degradation, corporate power, democratic deficits and other issues – in a participatory and empowering manner.

3)  To provide a space which breaks down the barriers between art, music, culture, community organising and political activism in Manchester.


Some of the things we want at the Social Centre

- meeting and workshop space
- art studio
- vegetarian cafe-kitchen
- radical bookshop and library
- storage  space for community and campaign groups
- poster and leaflet space
- community allotment
- fundraiser space