Professor Paul Haywood from the University of Salford argues that the domination of public  engagement and public funding by an increasingly professionalised creative sector has unintentionally forced citizens to find increasingly deviant and imaginative ways of preserving and promoting their own cultural enterprise (activism).

In this Perspectives Essay, the Leader of Manchester City Council, Richard Leese, argues that for the foreseeable future a healthy, sustainable future for Manchester and, by association, Greater Manchester depends on maintaining a growth trajectory. This is not growth at any cost. The city should continue to be capable of sustaining human life in a socially acceptable and civilised way. Drawing on evidence from the city’s recent history of urban development, he concludes that Manchester is going in the right direction, and that the city-region is taking the right approach, building consensus and taking people with it, but that the pace of change needs to quicken.

Approved by the AGMA Executive Board on 29th July 2011, the Greater Manchester Climate Change Strategy sets out how we aim to reduce direct carbon dioxide emissions by an ambitious 48% by 2020 - a target 14% above compliance with the UK Government Target, competitive with international practice! The implementation plan for the strategy 2012-14 provides the context for current work.

This article features the work of the pupils of Temple Primary School, Manchester, which was part of the Sustainable Stories interactive exhibition staged at CUBE. The aim of the exhibition was to share and provoke discussions about the future of Greater Manchester. Its aim was to engage the public in a shared conversation about challenges, issues and solutions to make Greater Manchester more sustainable.