20,000 people turn out for Manchester Day parade
It's the first one in three years
The Manchester Day parade has made its long-awaited return to the city, after a three-year hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic.
It's the 11th time the event's been marked, with the now legendary parade first being held in 2010.
More than 1300 people took part in this year's parade, with 100 volunteers and 30 artists helping put in a combined 41,600 hours of work to pull the day off!
Full of music, dance, and expression, the parade was this year themed around Manchester's young people and drew strongly on ideas of Mancunian identity.
It's estimated 20,000 people packed the pavements along Deansgate, to watch it all unfold.
One of the parade highlights was the Queen Bee Gondola.
The worker bee is the symbol of the city, with the structure starting off the parade in style.
The part-gondola, part insect design paid homage to the city’s rich industrial heritage and imagines Manchester as a kind of Northern Venice.
Little Amal, the 3.4 metre high puppet of a Syrian girl refugee who arrived in Manchester last summer, also returned to the city for this year's parade.
Among other themed floats this year was 'The Train'. It represented Stephenson’s Rocket, which was one of the first locomotives to run along the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world’s first passenger train line that opened in 1830.
This float paid homage to the iconic design of Rocket and also gave a nod to the horses who used to pull goods up and down the Manchester Ship Canal, before the railway was built, with its carriages full of holidaying horses.
Councillor Pat Karney, Chair of Manchester Day:
"There really is nowhere quite like Manchester, and as anyone who has ever been along to Manchester Day or watched our spectacular parade knows, there is absolutely nowhere on the planet that can match Manchester on Manchester Day.
"The atmosphere in the city is fantastic, it's always amazing and the parade never fails to impress and surprise. It's a day when everyone smiles and the sun always shines."
As well as food and drinks stalls in Cathedral Gardens, a special programme of activities was also organised by young people in Piccadilly Gardens. It included street dance, soulful acoustic sets, urban positive rapping, an Instagram wall, and a graffiti wall for young people to express what Manchester means to them.