Exploring the natural world through literature and exchange between UK and China, this 9-month project will forge a lasting partnership between Manchester and Nanjing, both UNESCO Cities of Literature and UNESCO Cities of Lifelong Learning.

The artist exchange is central to the project, uniting poets, illustrators, and playwrights from both cities to create new work. As part of the exchange, artists from Manchester will visit Nanjing in March 2025. The creative collaborations will explore the ecological theme of Real Contentment, inspired by Han Dong‘s poetry. A new bilingual illustrated poetry collection and play will be released later this year. The programme is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants.

The six selected artists include Forward Prize shortlisted poets, two award-winning TV and script writers, one of China’s most avant-garde poets and founding member of the Nanjing Calligraphy Academy.

Han Dong mainly writes poems and novels, he is a representative of the New Generation Novelists. To date, he has published around fifty works including collections of poems, novels, novellas, and essays. His first novel Banished! was long-listed for Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. Some of his selected poems have been translated and published in Capriccio on the Way to Buy Salt, and anthologised in The Qilin’s Gaze: Poems by 12 Contemporary Nanjing Poets. His novels include Metamorphosis of an Educated Youth, Me and You, and My Plato. His poetry collections in Chinese include Dad’s Looking Down on Me from The Sky, Miracle, and Sorrow or Eternal Life. He is a winner of the Lu Xun Literary Award, Golden Phoenix Medal, and Chinese Media Literary Award for Long Fiction.

Amy Lever is an award-winning writer/actor from Manchester. As a writer her work includes the award-winning, five-star reviewed “Life Before the Line” (Cambridge University Edinburgh Fringe Prize). She was named runner up for the Alpine Fellowship Prize for Playwriting, a finalist for the Channel 4 Writing for TV Awards, selected for Channel 4 x New Writing North Development Scheme and was a part of The Warner Bros Writers Exchange Programme with Warner Bros, The Royal Exchange and Wall to Wall.

Zhou Meisen is a fiction writer and screenwriter and now serves as the Vice President of the Jiangsu Writers’ Association. nfluenced by Balzac and Dickens, his works are characterised by strong realism and plot twists. In his works readers can find a focus on under-class characters’ destinies and critiques of injustices from the suppressive political forces on individuals. . His novel Made in China was  a winner of the National Book Award and National Bestseller Award. His other works include a twelve-volume Zhou Meisen Anthology and the TV script for In the Name of the People, among others.

Eleanor Mulhearn is a visual artist and storyteller, whose multidisciplinary practice spans illustration, animation, sculpture, and installation. Drawing inspiration from materials discovered in archives, libraries, museums and places, her work explores fragile, overlooked, and diverse histories, stories, and ecologies. Through engagement with these spaces, Eleanor creates narrative-driven, lyrical works, thematically engaging with the non-material world. Since 2002, Eleanor has collaborated across art, design, and theatre contexts, working with diverse artists and institutions, nationally and internationally, within group and solo projects. Eleanor is Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation, and a researcher, at Manchester School of Art.

Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a poet of both British and Ukrainian heritage. Her debut collection Food for the Dead, published by Jonathan Cape in 2024, was a winner of an Eric Gregory Award (2023) and the Laurel Prize for Best First Collection UK (2024). Shevchenko Knight is an NWCDTP-funded PhD candidate at the Manchester Writing School.

Yao Yuan is Director of the Landscape Painting Institute under the Nanjing Painting and Calligraphy Academy, reflecting her commitment to art for ecology, as well as Founding President of the Nanjing Kai-Ming Painting and Calligraphy Academy. Asan acknowledged expert, she is also a member of the Committee of Traditional Bird and Flower Painting of Jiangsu Artists Association. She has been featured by multiple art galleries and exhibitions at the regional and national levels in China. In 2017, her works were included at the Influence: Women in Art Exhibition at NYC Grand Central Terminal, and she gave a lecture on Chinese traditional ink painting at the UN Headquarters New York.

In addition to the artist exchange, a school engagement programme involving Year 3-6 pupils has also been launched, fostering inter-cultural understanding and addressing our relationship with the environment through creative expression. The work created by the artist exchange and schools programme will be shared at the Festival of Libraries in June 2025 when Manchester hosts the artists from Nanjing.

Anita Ngai, Creative Producer for the project, says, “We are very delighted with the selection of these six artists and are keen to see the work they will collaboratively produce. I am particularly excited to have Charlotte, Eleanor and Amy represent Manchester and through their artistic sensibilities bring what they experience and learn about the Chinese people and culture into perspective for British audiences, and vice versa. With our shared statuses as UNESCO Cities of Literature and Lifelong Learning, the two cities, as well as our partners, look forward to embarking on this journey of discovery and exchange together in the coming months and beyond.”

This project is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects. It’s delivered in partnership with Nanjing University of the Arts, University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Confucius Institute Manchester.

Chantal Harrison-Lee, Global Lead for International Collaboration Grants at the British Council says:

“We are excited to support Real Contentment project and the collaboration between Manchester City of Literature and Nanjing City of Literature and we are delighted to see the range, calibre and experience of the six artists who will be contributing to this collaborative exchange project.

“The International Collaboration Grants support new cultural collaborations between UK artists, arts professionals and organisations and their global peers, providing opportunities to share work with new international audiences.

“We look forward to seeing not only the new poetry collection and play which result from this exchange, but how this project supports a long lasting relationship between Manchester and Nanjing Cities of Literature, and the artists participating’