Curating Class 4: Samantha Manton on ‘Lives Less Ordinary: Working-class Britain Re-seen'
Gloves Off: Stories from Cultural Collections & Galleries at the University of LeedsShow Notes
“This wasn’t an exhibition of ‘working-class art’, but an attempt to reframe working-class experience by utilising a gaze from within, bringing together a plurality of working-class voices”. Samantha Manton, curator of ‘Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' at Two Temple Place in 2025 talks about her methodologies and the decisions she made – consciously and unconsciously – in initiating and putting together the exhibition. “I had a rolling list of the ways in which I felt working-class artists and subjects have had their nuanced experiences, perspectives and contributions misinterpreted, misrepresented and dismissed completely in the service of sustaining narrow, simplistic and derogatory views of working-class life. “In some cases I narrated these oppressions directly, but in others it was simply about actively resisting the oppressive tendencies that artists had been subject to in the past.” https://twotempleplace.org/exhibitions/lives-less-ordinary/ This content has been adapted from an illustrated talk, introduced by curator, researcher and founder of the Working Class British Art Network Beth Hughes, and recorded in front of a live audience at Curating Class: Rethinking Art Exhibitions Methodologies. This day of talks and discussions was hosted by the University of Leeds Cultural Collections & Galleries in spring 2026 to coincide with the 2025-26 exhibition ‘[uz], [uz], [uz]: Artists from Working-Class Backgrounds’ at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery. Co-produced by University of Leeds Cultural Collections & Galleries and the Working Class British Art Network. Image: A visitor to the exhibition ‘Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen' at Two Temple Place, London. Credit: Richard Eaton.
Biography Samantha Manton is a London-based curator, researcher and cultural producer with over fifteen years of experience across the creative sector. She spent six years as part of the team developing the V&A’s two new east London sites — the V&A East Storehouse and the recently opened V&A East Museum — and curated the latter’s Why We Make collection galleries. As an independent practitioner, she recently curated Lives Less Ordinary: Working-class Britain Re-seen for Two Temple Place, an exhibition which challenged stereotypical and reductive representations of working-class lives in art and ran from January to April 2025. Drawing on her own working-class background, Samantha’s practice centres underrepresented perspectives within museums and cultural institutions. She will shortly be embarking on a 'New Narratives' research fellowship with the Paul Mellon Centre to deepen her research into class and museum collections.
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The Bingley Byron is the toast of the Bradford arts scene, but trouble’s brewing as he sets out his stall as an establishment rhymer. And back in the present, a descendant of the poet meets his likeness at the University of Leeds. Also known as The Orpheus of Bradford and The Airedale Poet, John Nicholson was a Methodist preacher and a tormented drinker, a rambler on Rombald’s Moor and a champion of industry, a conservative and a radical, a woolsorter and a classically-inclined poet. He got arrested in London for arguing with a bust of Shakespeare; became a pawn in one of the great political scraps of the 19th century; played the oboe; fathered nine children; and ad-libbed untold quantities of rhyme for his pals in the pub, most of which has been lost to intoxication and the passage of time. In 1993 Northern Broadsides legend Barrie Rutter brought him back to life on the stage in Tony Harrison’s play Poetry or Bust. We’ve used Harrison’s archive, held here in Cultural Collections at the University of Leeds, to retrace his steps, in the steps, in turn, of John Nicholson. Only a brief biography on The Bingley Byron survives, but we’ve gathered a cast of poets, actors, artists, bellringers, historians, enthusiasts – and a direct descendant – to return to the poems that Nicholson did write down, and the places where he lived and died, to unearth his chaotic, charismatic story. Through his life and work, we think about art, joy, memory, grief, and what we leave behind us. From the meadow pipits, skylarks and standing stones of Ilkley Moor to the river at Saltaire where he met his end, join us in the footsteps of The Bingley Byron.
Grief pulls John Nicholson back to his family’s devout Methodism – for now – as The Bingley Byron turns the loss of his young bride into art that retains the power to console the bereaved. Also known as The Orpheus of Bradford and The Airedale Poet, John Nicholson was a Methodist preacher and a tormented drinker, a rambler on Rombald’s Moor and a champion of industry, a conservative and a radical, a woolsorter and a classically-inclined poet. He got arrested in London for arguing with a bust of Shakespeare; became a pawn in one of the great political scraps of the 19th century; played the oboe; fathered nine children; and ad-libbed untold quantities of rhyme for his pals in the pub, most of which has been lost to intoxication and the passage of time. In 1993 Northern Broadsides legend Barrie Rutter brought him back to life on the stage in Tony Harrison’s play Poetry or Bust. We’ve used Harrison’s archive, held here in Cultural Collections at the University of Leeds, to retrace his steps, in the steps, in turn, of John Nicholson. Only a brief biography on The Bingley Byron survives, but we’ve gathered a cast of poets, actors, artists, bellringers, historians, enthusiasts – and a direct descendant – to return to the poems that Nicholson did write down, and the places where he lived and died, to unearth his chaotic, charismatic story. Through his life and work, we think about art, joy, memory, grief, and what we leave behind us. From the meadow pipits, skylarks and standing stones of Ilkley Moor to the river at Saltaire where he met his end, join us in the footsteps of The Bingley Byron. Series credits Presented by Dr RJ Wade with Paul BennettDr Adam BridgenDr Vic ClarkeFelix CryerAlex DuxburyTom DuxburyKarl GraveAllan MirfieldConrad NelsonHadley NicholsonSarah PrescottCatherine RobinsonElaine RobinsonHarold RobinsonBarrie RutterSiân ThomasDom Basil Watkins OSBGlyn WatkinsProfessor John Whale The Bellringers of All Saints Church, BingleyJane CallaghanAnn CossavellaKarl GraveJane LynchHelen Mitchell-HallMary PickenGary PickenPeter Tedder Hydrophone recordings made on location in the River Aire, Saltaire by Daniel Skevington Produced and edited by Rowland Thomas Music The Farmer’s Boy(Traditional) Air: ‘O, much lov'd Son, if Death’, from Artaxerxes(Thomas Arne) Arranged and performed by Alice Gilmour and The Infernal CauldronSound design by The Infernal Cauldron Trailer edit by Alex Ramseyer-Bache. Wildlife footage by Tom Duxbury.
Also known as The Orpheus of Bradford and The Airedale Poet, John Nicholson was a Methodist preacher and a tormented drinker, a rambler on Rombald’s Moor and a champion of industry, a conservative and a radical, a woolsorter and a classically-inclined poet. He got arrested in London for arguing with a bust of Shakespeare; became a pawn in one of the great political scraps of the 19th century; played the oboe; fathered nine children; and ad-libbed untold quantities of rhyme for his pals in the pub, most of which has been lost to intoxication and the passage of time. In 1993 Northern Broadsides legend Barrie Rutter brought him back to life on the stage in Tony Harrison’s play Poetry or Bust. We’ve used Harrison’s archive, held here in Cultural Collections at the University of Leeds, to retrace his steps, in the steps, in turn, of John Nicholson. Only a brief biography on The Bingley Byron survives, but we’ve gathered a cast of poets, actors, artists, bellringers, historians, enthusiasts – and a direct descendant – to return to the poems that Nicholson did write down, and the places where he lived and died, to unearth his chaotic, charismatic story. Through his life and work, we think about art, joy, memory, grief, and what we leave behind us. From the meadow pipits, skylarks and standing stones of Ilkley Moor to the river at Saltaire where he met his end, join us in the footsteps of The Bingley Byron. Series credits Presented by Dr RJ Wade with Paul BennettDr Adam BridgenDr Vic ClarkeFelix CryerAlex Duxbury Tom DuxburyKarl GraveAllan MirfieldConrad NelsonHadley NicholsonSarah PrescottCatherine RobinsonElaine RobinsonHarold RobinsonBarrie RutterSiân ThomasDom Basil Watkins OSBGlyn WatkinsProfessor John Whale The Bellringers of All Saints Church, BingleyJane CallaghanAnn CossavellaKarl GraveJane LynchHelen Mitchell-HallMary PickenGary PickenPeter Tedder Hydrophone recordings made on location in the River Aire, Saltaire by Daniel Skevington Produced and edited by Rowland Thomas Music The Farmer’s Boy (Traditional) Air: ‘O, much lov'd Son, if Death’, from Artaxerxes (Thomas Arne) Arranged and performed by Alice Gilmour and The Infernal CauldronSound design by The Infernal Cauldron Trailer edit by Alex Ramseyer-Bache. Wildlife footage by Tom Duxbury.
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