The River Irk runs through Harpurhey in North Manchester – one of Britain’s most economically deprived suburban areas. It is also one of the city’s least visible rivers, culverted for long stretches, its banks largely inaccessible, its history folded into the industrial ground beneath it. This project began as a question about what it means to listen to a river that has been ignored, and what it reveals about the communities that live alongside it.

Between 2023 and 2026, Brehony developed a body of work rooted in the River Irk and the wider landscape of Harpurhey – conducting archive research, field recording, film documentation, and public workshops. The work operates at the intersection of ecological and socio-material history, asking how rivers function as time-capsules of collective memory and what they can tell us about processes of urban change.

Two Worlds is a durational multichannel sound works made up of hydrophone and field recordings made on return visits to Harpurhey from 2023. Recorded beneath the surface of the River Irk, it captures the hum of local industrial estates alongside the resilient, material flow of the river itself – two worlds held in one recording. It originates from a durational listening practice developed over the preceding year, using different recording methods to document the sound of an area in transition. Listening to the river through hydrophones reveals a hidden world of intricate sound textures: deeper resonant hums, sudden bursts of clarity, soft murmurs and rough currents intertwined beneath the surface. Each layer speaks to the river’s ongoing life during a period of significant change.

This listening practice is rooted in lived experience. My grandmother was handed a letter from the council in 2008, aged 82, informing her of the removal of tenants on her street. Another council house became available in the same area, and she watched the demolition of a home she had known since childhood. She wrote a poetry collection about this experience – of finding light during immovable circumstances, through creative acts with natural environments. That story is a familiar one for social housing residents, not only in Manchester but across Britain and beyond.

Near the site of these recordings, old mills have been sold to private investors for millions of pounds. Riverside apartments are being built beside a river in need of restoration. When council estates are described as ‘up and coming’ areas, my stomach forms knots. I continue to hear these words in conversations with people more comfortable with the processes of a city’s evolution than I am. Sound became a way of investigating these investments – questioning the intentions of property developers and the impact on existing tenants – from the ground level of the river itself.

Alongside the sound work, Harpurhey Ponds – a largely inaccessible public space beside the River Irk – became a site of workshop activity. Although a public place, it feels like a secret. Sound walks brought local people into direct, embodied relationship with the area: with its archive, its ecology, and its possible futures.

A Charter of Water Rights for the River Irk was developed through this process, thinking and writing with the river, articulating the river’s claim to care, attention, and restoration. Poetic films documenting this body of work are held in the North West Film Archive.

Equilibrium, in this research, came slowly. Learning that £1.6 million was being invested in Manchester Youth Zone – a long-standing community centre in Harpurhey – and that plans were in place to develop Harpurhey Wetlands, making the area more accessible to all. Holding both things at once: the anxiety of investment and the genuine possibility of care.

Two Worlds and associated works from this project were developed as part of the broader Liquid History series. Field recordings from the River Irk feature in the Sounding Water event (2025), in the Sound Room at University of Oxford (2025), and through live performance with moving image and poetry at Sounds From The Other City Festival (2026)

Field Images from March 2024