Mancunian swagger: The city that became an influencer heaven
The 25-year-old knew no one in Manchester other than a few extended family members and had initially planned to stay only temporarily, using it as a base to travel around Europe and explore other parts of the world.
But everything changed when videos of dance lessons were posted on TikTok. What started as a hobby quickly turned into a business.
“We’ve been sold for seven months,” he says. Their classes cater to different dance abilities and can accommodate up to 40 people each.
“Northerners are very friendly,” Sufia told me over matcha at a cafe near her flat in Ancoats. “I felt very welcome.”
She says business was going so well that she quit her full-time marketing job in February to focus solely on her dance business.
Tall buildings like those in Ancoats, which suffered great deprivation after the war, are clear evidence of Manchester’s redevelopment, but Swinney says the economic “miracle of growth” is overestimated by official statistics.
“There was no explosion this big” [economic] productivity,” he says.
He also notes that average wages in Greater Manchester are not rising as much as you might think: Only 1% since 2019, external When adjusted for inflation.
There are also concerns about high-rise apartment buildings being built, with some requiring repairs due to safety issues. In April, a developer was taken to court by the government for using taxpayers’ money for such improvements.
Away from downtown high-rises, Swinney thinks the city is adopting policies that could spur economic growth in surrounding areas.
He says transportation is a good example; because Greater Manchester was the first area in England, outside Greater London, to have local control of its bus network since deregulation in the 1980s.
