The not-for-profit Mary Burns Community Group, over 15 years, has proved its value working with community groups on a huge array of issues, ranging from bringing asylum seeker youngsters together with local young Salfordians; to working with former Agecroft Colliery miners producing exhibitions, oral history and a permanent monument to the mine; to recently leading a huge Ambition For Ageing project working with elderly groups in Moss Side, Bolton and Salford producing films and magazines. Mary Burns also produced the award-winning Salford Star community magazine and website which closed in May 2021 after 15 years.

The Mary Burns Community Group is named after Mary Burns, partner of Friedrich Engels, who showed him the poverty that people were living in during Victorian times, which subsequently allowed him to write his classic book, The Condition of the Working Class in England and, later, the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. For more details click here…

Our Team

Nigel Pivaro

Our team includes former Coronation Street actor, Nigel Pivaro, who will handle documentary and film production (his father also managed the Whisky A Go Go Club on Bury New Road that had Jimmy Savile’s club above and was subsequently burnt down by gangsters).

Stephen Kingston

A music, lifestyle writer/investigative journalist who has written for The Times, Elle, Manchester Evening News (etc) and was the last journalist to interview Morrissey while he was still with The Smiths (about the Strangeways album). Books include High Flyers:ClubRavePartyArt and Pamela Anderson in Pictures (don’t ask!), while he was also editor of the Salford Star for 15 years. Stephen has lived on and around Bury New Road for most of his life.

Louise Garman

Chelsea School of Art, Royal Academy and Slade trained artist who has exhibited extensively around the country and Europe, while running art workshops everywhere from foodbanks to cruise liners. Her art turns up the volume of life, and she has also lived just off Bury New Road for most of her life. See her website – click here

Alice Searle

Written two sold out books about Kersal Moor, lives a few yards from Bury New Road and led the National Lottery funded Irwell Valley Mining Project which included a permanent monument for Agecroft Colliery.

Rafe Conn

Masters degree in film making from University of Salford, born off Bury New Road, has made loads of short films and is a livestream guru for groups including Manchester People’s Assembly.