Featured image and gallery: Hoang Phan Notebooks were carried from one workshop to another. Writers from different generations sat around tables, sharing manuscripts and listening to each other. Outdoors, small groups strolled along Oxford Road, pausing before buildings steeped in literary history. This was the scene during the Manchester Writing School Summer Festival 2026, held…
Manchester Psych Fest returns in September 2026, bringing its multi‑venue programme of psychedelic music and arts to the Oxford Road Corridor. The festival’s central hub remains at the O2 Apollo, with additional shows at the O2 Ritz, Gorilla, The Deaf Institute and YES Bar. This year’s headliners include The Beta Band, marking their first major UK appearance since disbanding over two decades ago. The cult Scottish group amassed audiences with their blending of folk, electronic music and eccentricity into a sound…
Featured image: American Football – American Football album artwork The debut album has long been treated as a baptism of fire for artists – the deciding factor that determines whether a band will ‘make it’ or not. Some debuts set the tone for what follows: Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m…
Featured image: Ella Venn and Nicola Cutts Manchester’s Open Fly talk new music, performance mishaps and men. Bassist Lily Rose believes that women have better things to say than men when it comes to song lyrics, especially in the world of indie bands. She says this with a sheepish smile as her bandmate and frontwoman…
Welcome to The REAL Issue What is real, anyway? We are, dear readers, perhaps in the age of the unreal. We date through apps. We chat mostly through text boxes. Robots write our emails. We lose sleep watching videos of nonsense that we know do us harm, yet feel no desire to switch off. A…
aAh! is Manchester Metropolitan University's official arts and culture student magazine.
