Ahead of Manchester’s inaugural BRIT Awards on Saturday, Manchester Met’s School of Art alumni have helped to transform the city centre streets into a spectacular open-air gallery.
Six talented graduates were personally selected by renowned artist and BRITs Art Trail curator Stanley Chow to produce large-scale installations for the citywide trail, launched to celebrate Manchester’s vibrant creative community in the build-up to this weekend’s BRITs.
From the concept of love and singer Olivia Dean’s latest album to the suffragettes and rock band Amyl and the Sniffers, the installations were all inspired by Manchester’s cultural roots and by this year’s nominations for the iconic BRITs.
Taking place for the first time in Manchester, the 2026 BRIT Awards will see thousands of fans flocking to the city’s Co-Op Live venue for the main event on Saturday, and to the city’s Northern Quarter and Ancoats areas this week to take part in the specially curated art trail.
Manchester Met Graphic Design graduate and full-time freelance illustrator Jessica Lee was one of the artists chosen by Chow to create a striking graphic billboard mural for the trail, which is now on display in Lever Street. Titled The Art of Loving after BRIT nominee Olivia Dean’s album of the same name, the colourful installation explores the concept of love.
Lee said: “I wanted to capture the many different emotions of the album through my character work. Each heart character represents a different emotion. It explores how love comes in so many different forms. I think her album is a beautiful reminder that love is all around us and in the current state of the world we could all use a bit of love, spread a bit of love and try to find joy in the little things of life.”
Feminism and Manchester’s suffragette movement were the inspirations behind Art Foundation graduate and illustrator Barney Ibbotson’s bold billboard takeover U Should Not Be Doing That.
With a direct reference to BRIT International Group of the Year nominees Amyl and the Sniffers, Ibbotson’s dramatic Peak Street piece links Emeline Pankhurst and Manchester’s suffragette legacy with lead singer Amy Taylor’s loud and unapologetic feminism. He said: “I pieced my artwork together out of all these different elements and there are lots of symbols.
“I added the arches of the Free Trade Hall along the bottom where the Women’s Social and Political Union used to have their meetings. At the top you’ve got modern day Manchester with the high-rise buildings, so there’s a bridge between the ages.
“There are more references to the suffragettes with the tricolour flag they used to fly, and the toffee hammers they used to smash windows as an act of disruption.”
Other Manchester Met alumni represented in the trail created impressive artwork including famous Mancunian pubs, detailed planetary forms and a lyric from rock band Wet Leg, among other rock-inspired imagery.
Illustration with Animation graduate Florence Burns, who created large-scale piece DISRUPT depicting a high heeled shoe on a drum foot pedal, added: “DISRUPT emerged from thinking about visibility and who has historically been centred within music culture. It’s a tribute to the women and non-binary people (past, present, and future) demanding to be heard and taken seriously against male-dominated power structures – and those with intersecting identities who face even more bias.
“Manchester Met played a huge role in launching my career. I was genuinely thrilled to be invited to take part – it felt like a full-circle moment for me as a Manchester creative.”
Also joining Lee, Ibbotson and Burns in the trail are fellow Manchester Met School of Art alumni artists David Bailey, Jake Beddow and ‘Oskar with a K’.
Professor of Screen Studies at Manchester Met’s School of Digital Arts (SODA) Kirsty Fairclough, a member of the BRITs Fringe Steering Group, added: “We are immensely proud of our involvement in this year’s BRIT Awards, and particularly of the amazing contributions from our talented Art and Design graduates.
“Manchester Met is at the heart of the creative and cultural scene here in Manchester so it’s fitting that we’re playing such a key role in the BRITs and contributing to the excitement and buzz around the city. We can’t wait to see the events unfold!”
The Brits Art Trail is taking place around Manchester’s Northern Quarter and Ancoats and will be in situ until Monday 16th March. View a map of the trail here.
