A new festival celebrating the weekend and free time is putting on a massive Sunday Roast in Salford next month. We Invented The Weekend: The Festival of Free Time, is taking place at venues and spaces across the city, inspired by the pioneering campaigning of warehouse clerk Robert Lowes, who convinced the powerful businessmen of Manchester to give workers holidays and leisure time.
It may not be widely known, but without Greater Manchester, we might not have the weekend as we know it. Thanks to Robert Lowes, workers were allowed to have Saturday afternoons off, paving the way for the weekend as we now know it.
Lowes later became director of Salford Lyceum, and his work in getting us all a bit more time off will be celebrated as part of the festival this September. One element of the multi-venue celebration will be a huge communal classic Sunday Roast, put together by Eat Well MCR - a collective of Manchester-based chefs who provide meals to people living in challenging circumstances.
