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The Sally Sessions: “It’s a pathway into future live radio shows for Manchester Met broadcasters”

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The second live radio ‘Sally Session’ – coming from The Salutation Pub on campus on the 26th of October – is another step towards careers in broadcasting for students working on the show.

Presented by music journalist and broadcaster John Robb, it’s a one-hour mix of music and chat with Manchester music legend Bruce Mitchell and rising star OneDa – the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ voices from the city scene.

Manchester Met students will be working on the show, so they can gain experience for their future. Our own student radio show STUDENT RADAR is part of this network.

The show will be produced by Daniel Nathan of Brighton-based Slack City radio, who began in pirate radio as a teenager. Among his career highlights was setting up Kiss FM in Manchester, later Capital, and setting up Slack City here will develop new talent as well as celebrate past achievements.

For the second Sally Session, the guests are Durutti Column drummer Bruce Mitchell and female rapper OneDa, in conversation with John Robb in front of a live audience in the comfortable surroundings of The Salutation, a fixture of the Manchester music scene in the 1970s and 1980s.

Daniel says: “Bruce has been a fixture in Manchester’s music scene since the early 1970 until now. He has been there the whole way through this history! OneDa is a really fascinating artist both in terms of how she’s emerged as a spoken word and rap figure and now being a mentor in her own right to a new generation of female rappers.”

The Sally Sessions is a partnership between Slack City, Manchester Met and The Salutation manager Dermot O’Dea to create opportunities for students to work on live music productions. More shows are planned at the Louder Than Words Festival taking place in November.

Another event to look out for is their show titled Adventures in Grassroots Music, presented by Jay Taylor, English National Coordinator for Music Venue Trust. In each episode, Jay talks to a key figure in the grassroots music scene.

The Slack City team will also be at Un-Convention Manchester 2024, a music industry conference held at the Band On the Wall in Swan Street, Manchester on November 21st and 22nd.

Daniel says: “I’d love to see the Sally Sessions take hold and have a life that is independent of me. If it’s to work in Manchester, it needs to be reflecting what’s going on in the city and to have shared ownership. The ambition is to end up with some kind of physical space, like in a gallery or within the university, and for it to be self-sustaining.”

In the long term, Daniel hopes the show will find a home at the university and become a new and independent voice for future generations. Daniel urges students wanting to work in music production and radio to get involved and join the Slack City Manchester team.


The Sally Sessions #2 is free and will be live from 7pm-9pm on Saturday 26th October, hosted online on the Slack City website.

To get involved with Slack City radio, contact the team on @Slackcity.org.uk, indicating which shows you are interested in working on.

More information can be found over on the Slack City Instagram @slackcityradio.

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Alice Haston

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