Page updated 25th November 2022
What is MossSideStory for?
MossSideStory offers a community noticeboard and display space for people in and around Moss Side and the neighbouring areas of Manchester. It is a local volunteer project. Use it to:
- Find What’s On – find out in one place, the wide range of things going on.
- Publicise + Share – share and publicise local events, online events relevant to local people, and useful information, local projects, and more.
- Change the Story – together transform what people see when they search online for Moss Side, so helping to boost morale and pride in our area, and change perceptions elsewhere.
- Connect + Act – enable local community groups to communicate with local people, so that we can all connect and participate more in activities to improve our environment and life.
- Hold on to Experience – share local (his)stories, ideas and life experience we care about, so that we hold on to local experience, and celebrate local lives and achievements, instead of letting them be forgotten.
Using the name ‘Moss Side Story’ came with personal support from Barry Adamson, whose 1989 album made this title famous, echoing ‘West Side Story’.
The site helped to launch the local project MossSide1.5°, and became home for local community groups Upping It, MossSideEcoSquad, WeAreMossSide, GreatSoWeCAN and PCRA, replacing their previous individual websites.
The site functions on mobile phones, where most people access it. It is designed to be easy to post, especially for those who are less experienced online. (It has automated security, and all posts are reviewed before being published.)
The site is visible on Google searches because it is fast to load, meets accessibility demands, is constantly updated, and connects a range of locally relevant projects, information and events. (Google recommends your post be more than 300 words to be delivered in searches.)
The site will become visible for your project and your areas of interest when there are Events and Posts about your project and your areas of interest. So start posting! What the site will become depends on what we post on it.
How you can use MossSideStory
- For individuals –
Use MossSideStory to find out what’s are happening in and around Moss Side, so you can join interesting events and connect with other local people. - For active individuals –
Share the events and community projects that you enjoy and care about. Then tell us how it went, what happened. Let’s share local ideas, experience and stories. It’s simple to do – just register/login and create an event or a post. - For local groups with no website (or a site that fails to appear in searches) –
Use MossSideStory to avoid the technical challenges of creating your own website, and to make sure people can search and find it. MSS makes it easy to ensure your project is visible to new local audiences, connects you with other local projects, and is visible everywhere else too. You can just create a single post, or create series of posts and events. - For organisations who already have a website –
Use MossSideStory to promote events, often more easily than on your own site. Use MSS also to report and review the event so there is a permanent public record. Use MSS to create posts specifically for local people that might feel out of place on your own site. If you link from your MSS post to your own site, and back again, you can boost the search visibility of both.
Take part in MossSideStory
MossSideStory is an innovative local community project. If you can help and be involved, please get in touch. Your interest and input would be very welcome.
- The Take part in MossSideStory page outlines our main practical activities, and invites your help and participation.
- If you have no time, but would like to support the project, please consider offering a donation. Everything helps!
Funding MossSideStory
- For the first year following the public launch of MossSideStory in November 2021 (at the ‘Keep Moss Side Cool’ event organised by Moss Side 1.5°), the Platt Claremont Residents Association (PCRA) have kindly used their funds to cover the £490 incurred costs for software, security and hosting. We are seeking funding elsewhere from December 2022.
- We are proud that the Moss Side group of citizens who took part in the 2022 ‘In Our Nature‘ project responding to the Climate Crisis, decided to fund the MossSideStory site maintenance by a nominal £10 per week for 2 years. It is a great local affirmation of the value and potential of the site.
- The citizen group also decided to fund the Millennium Powerhouse £2.5k to work with young people to inspire and enable them to write specifically for the MossSideStory site, especially on environmental and climate related issues. We look forward to their input. If you are a young person wanting support and inspiration to write, or would simply enjoy the collaboration, please contact Andrea or Lisa at the Powerhouse.
To make the site financially sustainable into the future, ongoing funding is needed for hosting, software and security, for the core work in maintenance, updating and problem-solving, for reviewing and supporting submitted posts and events, and hopefully also for inspiring, enabling and rewarding local contributors. Having shown the potential value of the site, we will be applying further. If you might be interested to offer part-funding, please get in touch.
When publicising events and their own work, funded organisations and groups will at some point in future be invited to make a financial contribution, exactly as they do for creating online publicity elsewhere.
Please use and enjoy the site, add events and posts, and support it in your own way. If you can help and be involved, please get in touch.
Offers, comments and feedback welcome!
Website security
Be assured that we check photos and other posts before they appear, and people need to Register to post. As you will see, there is also automated security, which may sometimes lead you to a page where you need to prove you are human.
As we explain in the obligatory Privacy policy and Terms & conditions, we have prioritised security and privacy, and will be ruthless in preventing anything unkind or offensive. If anything doesn’t seems right, please tell us now. We want our parents and children to enjoy this site too.
Accessibility
The site is designed to meet accessibility requirements. Posts can be read and clicked on any size screen. Navigation and text can be read by screen readers. It can all be translated by Google Translate into over 60 other languages, with a link provided on every post and page.
We have made posting as simple as it is possible to make it, and have created brief non-technical instructions. We have even tried to make the terms and policies that we are required to produce, readable. It is always an ongoing task, so your feedback is welcome.
More about Moss Side, Manchester
Moss Side is an area of central Manchester, just south of the city centre. It is on the doorstep of the science park and universities, and bordered by three great parks: Alexandra Park, Whitworth Park and Platt Fields.
The neighbouring areas are Rusholme, Fallowfield, Hulme, Ardwick and Walley Range.
Moss Side inspires a range of genuinely local community projects, with people working hard to support our communities and improve our environment. So alongside the familiar UK daily grind of low incomes, opportunist landlords, and lots of rubbish, there are some great local initiatives and networks, and lots happening.
MossSideStory.uk is an attempt to help these community projects to inspire wider participation, and to help more local people find out what’s going on. For those actively involved, community projects can offer challenging discussions, interesting ambitions and purposeful collaboration. Above all they offer us healthy activity and good inter-personal contact.
MossSideStory.uk is also a collaborative attempt to update and correct what people see online when searching for anything about Moss Side. As you have probably seen, what appears in searches is often decades old. Plus some journalists present Moss Side negatively, constantly reminding their readers of the 1981 uprising here and in many other UK cities against poverty, racism and lack of opportunity, which they call ‘riots’ yet do not explain. Sadly, the media also reports crimes as having happened here which actually happened in the adjacent areas (above), making only small corrections later. Surely no other small municipal ward in the UK gets named in this way.
Conversely, when reporting our positive news about community initiatives, or when selling houses or investing in new developments, the streets of Moss Side are somehow renamed as ‘Rusholme’, ‘Whalley Range’, or just ‘South Manchester’. This year, an otherwise great BBC report on local alley greening, somehow omitted the words ‘Moss Side’ from the report and the interviews, to present the impressive community activity here as merely ‘South Manchester’. Many viewers might have assumed our lovely alleys were in Didsbury or another middle class area of south Manchester. No, it is all happening here in lovely Moss Side.
So if ‘Moss Side’, our home, has negative connotations for you, it is because many in the media only use the name negatively. Come and meet the real people here. If you live or work here or nearby, please post events and more about what’s really happening, so that we together tell a different and truer story.
