Urban Jungle was an exhibition in 2014 held by Print Forward, a collaboration between the Manchester Print Fair and A New Leaf Manchester. The title was the only prompt, with the idea that artists create a piece that represented their back garden, favourite green space in the city centre or dream up something completely different. I chose to illustrate my back garden as this is my personal green space to escape to. It is very important to me to make nature a home in my garden and do my part to help British wildlife thrive, so I included some of my favourite animals that I’ve spotted in my garden – pipistrelle bats, long-tailed tits, hedgehogs and bumble bees – and showed some of the ways you can help them such as bird feeders, holes in fences for hedgehogs to pass through and bee friendly plants. All of the successful entries were printed as risographs in no more than three colours.
A New Leaf is a charity working to improve, promote and expand greenery and green spaces in Manchester city centre. The event raised more than £200 towards the project. Around 80 trees are to be planted, providing Manchester city centre with some much-needed greenery from Piccadilly station, all the way through the Northern Quarter. The project, called Northern Quarter Street Tree, will see the trail stretch from Piccadilly Station to Cathedral square via Hilton Street, Tariff Street and Dale Street.