‘Visions of The Unseen City’ is a European Union Youth Initiatives project run by young people from several European countries who are passionate about social justice.

We have been volunteering with the Jesuit Volunteer Community (JVC)  in Manchester and Birmingham and we’ve been wandering around the inner cities, taking pictures and talking to the people who are our neighbours in these areas.

Friedrich Engels, who lived in Manchester, said: “The town itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into contact with a working people’s quarter or even with workers, that is, so long as he confines himself to his business and to pleasure walks”  (The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844)

We used a Japanese proverb as our motto for the project: Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.

We found things haven’t changed much since his day. For many people, much of their nearest city is unseen - they don’t go there, and they don’t really know what life in the inner city is like for the ordinary people who live there, but they often have negative ideas about some areas.

We want to discover and document the places we live and work in, and the lives of those people who live around us.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of its authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.