Rose Queen Revisited (2013)
By
Lucy Wright
Photograph of the crowning of the Rose Queen, by former 1966 Rose Queen, Janet Robertson.
A social project and site-specific performance based on the historical Manley Park Rose Queen celebrations in South Manchester.
A social project and site-specific performance based on the historical Manley Park Rose Day celebrations—with members of the 2nd Alexandra Park Guides from Whalley Range, South Manchester, and former Manley Park Rose Day participants.
The annual ‘Rose Queen’ festival—roughly equivalent to the May Day celebrations held elsewhere in the UK—was once a highlight of the community calendar in the Northwest of England, particularly during the c.1930s to 1960s.
Catalyzed by an article about historical Rose Day celebrations in Manley Park, South Manchester, I worked with local Guides and former Rose Day participants to reinvent the Manley Park Rose Queen Festival for a site-specific performance at Manley Park Methodist Church in June 2013. Members of 2nd Alexandra Park Guides designed costumes and developed a programme of entertainment in celebration of the coronation of Rose Queen Tanith by Janet Robertson who had been crowned Manley Park Rose Queen herself in 1966, aged 15.
Part performance, part local history project, Rose Queen Re-imagined confronted tensions between dynamic recreation and transformation at play in the revival of folkloric practice, also exploring changing experiences of community in twenty-first-century Britain.
Rose Queen Re-imagined was showcased as part of Making Traditions at the People’s History Museum in Manchester in April 2014.
More information: https://www.artistic-researcher.co.uk/5580107/rose-queen-re-imagined
“I suppose fifteen-year-olds now are very different, aren’t they? Whereas then it was quite a rite of passage. Now maybe it wouldn’t be the same? ”