Help put Mr Manchester's treasure trove on display

TONY WILSON ARCHIVE LAUNCHES FUNDRAISER TO ALLOW PUBLIC TO SEE MEMORABILIA HIDDEN AWAY FOR YEARS

- ADAM MAIDMENT

FOR more than 17 years, a treasure trove of prints, posters, photographs, letters and documents collected together by Tony Wilson sat idly by in a vault within a Manchester museum.

But it is now hoped that they will soon get a new lease of life.

Dubbed ‘Mr Manchester’, Tony, from Pendleton in Salford, had a huge impact on the city’s arts and music scene thanks to his roles as co-founder of Factory Records and as founder and manager of the famed Hacienda nightclub. Tony, who died aged 57 in 2007, helped make the likes of Joy Division, Happy Mondays and New Order household names and also had a part to play in the city’s ‘Madchester’ scene in the 1980s.

But since his death, his archive of photos, documents and memorabilia has remained mostly untouched in the vaults of the Science and Industry Museum before later being relocated to John Rylands Library’s British Pop Archive.