No Place Like Little Hulton: A Conversation with Salford esK

It was a Monday, which is statistically the worst day of the week to run into someone like Salford esK. Not because he isn’t a pleasure to talk to, but because, much like a Kafka protagonist, you might find yourself lost in a bureaucratic nightmare of a natter, where every door leads to another anecdote, every anecdote opens into a history lesson, and before you know it, you’re sat in a community building in Little Hulton, nodding sagely about the Worsley Urban District Council like you’ve just completed a PhD on it.

But if there’s anyone who can make local history sound like a political thriller, it’s him. Salford esK – real name Stewart, but known as esK – paints, sculpts, and generally commits small acts of artistic rebellion in the name of a place that everyone talks about, but few actually listen to. His work isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about mythology creating folklore for a place that has always been little more than a footnote in Manchester’s grand narrative.

I sat down with him in what used to be a Big Local, a community space now at the end of its tenure, like so many spaces in Salford that have been shuffled about in the name of progress.

First off, who are you and where are we right now?

Okay, so my name is Stuart. I go by esK. What I do is paint and make sculptural work. I make art of all different kinds, and it’s always got some kind of community focus to it, trying to understand what community is, really reflecting upon where I’ve grown up – which is where we are today in Little Hulton. It’s an invented place. A magical place. A self-proclaimed shithole, but you know, it’s our shithole, innit? That’s what it’s about. 

Today, we’re in Community Little Hulton’s building, which is the former Big Local. It was always a community-led organisation, but this is actually one of the last days that they’re going to be here. So it’s quite a special place to be.

Salford is often seen as Manchester’s scrappy sibling, innit? Less polished, more real. Do you think Salford – and places like Little Hulton – get the cultural attention they deserve?

Definitely not. Definitely not. I agree that it’s Manchester’s scrappier sibling, although maybe those who actually still live in Ancoats would disagree with me ’cause they have a bit of a scrappy life on the backend behind the boxes that people live in now. But Salford is a scrappy place where the attention it gets has to come through Manchester, for whatever reason. Even in news articles, it’s always Manchester’s view on Little Hulton.

Little Hulton doesn’t really get to tell anyone what it’s about. Other people tell other people what Little Hulton is about, based on one street interview at the scene of a crime or something like that because that’s the only time someone from Manchester’s ever coming down this way. So no, it doesn’t get the cultural attention that it deserves – not a chance – because Little Hulton is a vibrant, rich place to live. That’s the reality of it.

On that point, some people might see Little Hulton as a forgotten place. Does your work aim to challenge that perception, or do you prefer to embrace it?

Little quick history lesson: Little Hulton was never part of Salford until 1974. It used to be Worsley Urban District Council letting the houses, then it became Salford. So in 1974, they were like, okay, Worsley Urban District Council is nothing now, and Salford went: “Right, this is our time, we’re going to take it.”

So if you think about it in the context of Salford, it is a forgotten place, because it’s on the arse-end of Salford. And even though Salford owns it, they keep going: “Oi, Bolton what do you reckon? Do you want a little bit of this?” And Bolton keeps going: “Nah, you’re alright.” But if you were to ask people in Little Hulton what it’s like to live here, some will say with a smile that it’s a shithole. Some say they love it here, their neighbours are here, they’ve lived here all their life.

You’re doing something quite interesting with your Little Hulton series, which captures the changing face of the area from 1949 to now. Can you explain a bit about this piece and what first drew you to the subject? 

What drew me to Little Hulton first, and the idea of doing a series of 60 paintings, was Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, which was a series of 60 paintings on the migration of black people from southern America to the North – that whole journey, people in transit.

I thought Little Hulton’s that kind of place as well. It’s a place of people in transit. It’s where I’ve grown up all my life, where I’ve lived, so I wanted to understand a little bit more about what it was like to live here throughout history and why we are at this point now. Because, you know, it’s a massive estate. It’s not Alderley Edge. We haven’t got all these beautiful, quaint shop fronts. It’s estates, it’s houses, then a little bit of shops and some services, then houses and houses and houses.

So, choosing to do a visual history of that helped me connect with it. I got to learn about the little things that made Little Hulton what it is today. And I think it would help younger people and other people living in Little Hulton connect with it a bit more tangibly as well.

Can you describe a bit more about your own practice and your feelings, and how your practice is incorporated into that series?

I like looking into the archives, and I think it comes a lot from speaking with my grandparents. I’ve been very fortunate to live very close to them. They tell stories. That’s just part of the life that I’ve come into, do you know what I mean? Like, we’re just sharing stories, hearing about their experiences, listening to music together, all this kind of stuff. That informs the way that series was created because I’m looking for stories.

If you ask people what the stories of Little Hulton are, they go: “Crime this, that, and the other.” It doesn’t have an obvious folklore like some places in Yorkshire might or something like that, but it’s there if you look for it. And that’s what kind of gets me going: looking for those little stories and creating my own folklore. It is based on historical facts, but the characters in this series are invented. I’m thinking about who would be there at that moment, basing it on pictures that I’ve seen. All that information is there, but it takes a lot to go through it all and try to turn it into a story that connects people from the 40s to now.

If you’ve just moved from somewhere else, or don’t have the opportunity to chat with your grandparents who’ve always lived here – how does your story now filter into the story of Little Hulton? Little Hulton is always changing, but it’s changing very quickly at the moment, and I think in a good way. I’m very optimistic about it.

There’s an old saying that “Salford came to Manchester for her education, while Manchester went to Salford for her amusements.” If we updated that for today, what would it say about Salford and Little Hulton?

It’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction but I’d say Salford stayed in Salford for its education. Salford stayed in Salford for its amusements as well. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can be a proper Salfordian without going to Manchester to engage in entertainment or education. What are you getting fucking educated on? Educated on what? I don’t know the new trendy, tiled pub or something like that? I don’t know. But I think what Salford really goes to Manchester for is money. That’s what Salford needs. 

And now we get clumped as this Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Salford goes to Manchester to get paid, pretty much. People from Salford go to Manchester, Warrington, all over the place to get paid. People come to Salford to live, I guess. That’s where we return to go to the more Manchester end of Salford – like The White Hotel and stuff like that – for a bit of a party. Or where I set up that studio in Salford near Pendleton. People go to Salford because they get kicked out of Manchester. So they come to Salford and say: “Okay, let’s set this shit up here instead.” People get pushed into Salford who aren’t from Salford – lucky for them, you know? And the people who are in Salford? We’re kind of self-sustaining.

You go to Manchester when you need something; you go to Manchester for your art suppliers. Don’t forget: you go to Manchester because you want to go to Wing Yip. That’s why I’m in Manchester nowadays, because they’ve got the shit that I need. It just so happens that it’s there. I want to get paid. You know, Manchester’s got the money, and if Manchester thinks that it is responsible for Salford, so be it. Pay us then.

How do you think Salford continues to keep its culture? It’s so diverse and so vast. How can Salford collectively – and I suppose maybe Greater Manchester – retain its cultural identity?

It makes me think about why people come to this space. People come here because we have a sewing club, for the games group, or because they have a counselling meeting. And that’s culture. That is story sharing. This space exists for people from all different walks of life to come together for whatever reason. It’s these “third spaces”, really, that need to be enshrined. If we were to speak with Allison, who runs the space as the main development manager, she would talk about co-funding. These kinds of spaces need co-funding because they are inherently valuable. It’s all well and good making a Sure Start across the way, but you chat with the people from Little Hulton, and they’ll say they don’t rate them. They’d rather come here. We interviewed over 700 people in Little Hulton as part of the project we’re doing here, and we asked people where they’d go for information if they needed it. They said “Here.” That’s, in a way, a culture. This culture of the statutory sector giving up more and more of its responsibilities to community-led organisations because they can’t fund it, haven’t got the time, and haven’t got the personnel. They should be paying people locally to do this kind of stuff.

What I’m trying to say is: Salford is a massive place, and there is this trend of community-led organisations putting on a lot of the activities, while the people living here and the statutory services focus on… Well I’d say the roads, but they barely even do that.

But we’ve also got to ask: What is Salford’s culture? And that’s a question of who’s talking about it. If it’s Manchester, then it’ll be gritty, Dirty Old Town, kind of stuff. And it is a bit of that, but Salford also has its own things, like the Whit Walks, sitting on your doorstep chatting with your neighbour, or going to the park on the weekend. It’s stuff that happens everywhere else. It’s not like “dark Satanic Mills” anymore.

We’ve got to question what the culture of Salford is. It’s an embracing place. You can come from anywhere – and that’s what happens. People get moved here, and they go: “Right, that’s where you live now. Hope you enjoy it, and we’ll give you no help to get involved in this community. You’re going to have to do that yourself. Good luck. See you later. Let us know how you get on. If you want to get moved somewhere else, then yeah, we might do it. See how you get on.”

But places like this, places like START – who do some art and wellbeing activities across Salford – embrace people and they support them. It’s all community-led. And I think that’s probably the culture of Salford. It’s an embracing place. If you get dropped here, people will look out for you, as they always have.

Salford has undergone massive redevelopment – MediaCity, Chapel Street, Ordsall. Do you think Little Hulton will be next? And if so, is that a good thing?

Funny thing, Little Hulton was originally supposed to be the site for MediaCity, but they went with the Quays instead. But let’s go back further. The heart of Salford, before all this redevelopment, was in those old Victorian terraces, the two-up-two-downs, scrubbing your doorstep clean on a Sunday, kids playing in grids, all that. When people were forced to move, they were moved to Little Hulton. At first, they built 50 houses. The Housing Minister came down, patted everyone on the back, and said: “Well done, you’re lucky to be here.” Then, every year after that, 1,500 more houses went up until 1957. And this was all built on top of miles of underground mines. My great-aunt lived in a house there, she moved out just before it collapsed into a mineshaft. There was a photo in the paper, just a settee sitting on the edge of this massive hole.

But now? There’s no space left. The estates are massive. Each one has 7,000 people but maybe one shop. The most recent developments have been middle-class estates more closed off, a bit cushier. They promised football pitches, we got kids’ parks instead.

So what’s next? Small projects redeveloping a pavilion into a proper community center, that kind of thing. The big developers aren’t interested in that. They want huge square footage, not little pockets of land. We’re already seeing how services are getting centralised, fewer GPs, one big health center instead. That’s just how things go. But in terms of development, the future of Little Hulton belongs to the grassroots. We can do things our own way.

Describe Little Hulton in three words.

Absolutely fucking beautiful. 

What’s more important, affordable housing or preserving character?

Affordable housing. People need houses. Simple as that. We can preserve character in other ways, but there’s no character if people can’t afford to live.

If your art could be displayed anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

Andy Burnham’s house. I want him to see it every day. We’ve tried to get him involved before. There’s this Pavilion event we do, and we’ve got a little owl that cranks out a random question for people to answer. We’ve asked if Andy Burnham would do it, answer a question on the spot, no prep. They’ve always said no.

I don’t even know if he’s ever been to Little Hulton. Same with Paul Dennett. So yeah, I’d put 30 paintings in Andy Burnham’s house, 30 in Paul Dennett’s. Maybe then they’d wake up every morning and think: “Wow, Little Hulton, what a place.”

Salford esK’s paintings, along with the works of other artists, can currently be viewed at Patchwork, an exhibition at STAT HQ in Leigh Spinners Mill. Patchwork is open Sundays and Mondays, 10 AM – 4 PM, until the end of March.