The former is An Apathetical Reader, which is ‘a creative community site that hopes to give a voice to the vast numbers of unsupported, disillusioned young people in the city and question why individuals feel apathy towards their own work’. It’ll achieve this through local news, national political comment, features of Manchester, music journalism and artist’s profiles.

The latter is The Chapel on the edge of Platt Fields in Rusholme/Fallowfield. This building, which dates back to 1790, was used as a meeting place for Manchester Amateur Photographic Society (itself founded in 1885) and the Russell Leite Theatre School until it was purchased a couple of years back.

Now, however, it’s being run by the same ambitious group of ex-students who launched Platt Fields’ Mad Ferret festival last year and who took over the (now closed) Ram & Shackle pub. Their aims, according to a post on Indymedia.org.uk, are  to provide an autonomous space for performing arts, learning, access to the arts and local campaigners. I’m hearing lots of grand ideas coming out of this unusual building, so best of luck to them.

And the link between these two? AAR will be holding an open meeting at The Chapel this coming Wednesday from 7pm. If you fancy getting involved, email Alice or join the AAR Facebook group.

If I wasn’t there I’d be at the Northern pub on Tib Street where the Social Media Cafe, a new monthly event, will be launching. It’s designed ‘for anyone involved or interested in social media as a means of reaching new audiences, collaboration and sharing skills and experience’.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re just such a person. And, based on Sarah Hartley’s post on her MEN blog, there are plenty of interested individuals – with Mindy from IndieCredential, Dave Carter and Adrian Slatcher from the MDDA, and Black Country Grammar’s Jonthebeef just a few of the recognisable names listed.

Here’s the programme for tomorrow:

18:00 Doors open
18:20 Introductions what we are and who we are
18:30 Panel discussion ‘Is blogging dead?’ (Craig McGinty, Martin Bryant, Chi-Chi Ekweozor (tbc), chair Sarah Hartley)
19:00 Questions
19:30 Networking
20:30 Round up and close

For more information and to register your interest, join the Google Group.

Manclopedia is a free, non-profit, open content encyclopedia project that aims to collect and summarise every single aspect of Greater Manchester (including it’s history, culture, politics, people and places) in hope of becoming the most comprehensive online collection of information regarding Manchester and the surrounding areas.

As well as serving as a source of learning, Manclopedia also hopes to work as medium for promotional interaction between Manchester-based projects and businesses and the general public as whole. By allowing Manchester-based artists and entrepreneurs to publish autobiographical articles Manclopedia hopes to serve as a platform to kick-start the careers of its most talented inhabitants whilst at the same time broadcasting the universal qualities of Manchester to the wider world.

Kenan admits that the site isn’t as populated as he wants it to be – a result of being ‘rumbled’ by the blogging community a month before its planned launch. Still, if people get involved it may soon be a useful resource – Chester’s wiki, also powered by MediaWiki, is something to aspire to. And, of course, there’s already a substantial Greater Manchester community on Wikipedia itself.

Manclopedia is ‘owned and operated’ by Hive, a web-based collective that runs Hive Central – a Ning-powered social networking site that promises a digital art gallery, music and videos, event information, venue locations and classified ads.

They’ve also launched a ‘Mad about Manchester’ toolbar. It’s an interesting tool that offers the latest posts from various Manchester blog (including Mancubist) – plus headlines from the MEN – within one click.

This year, Just.b returns with its Mapping Creativity project and another invitation to pitch, this time with four awards of £1,000 and one of £25,000 up for grabs:

Manchester Beacon aims to commission an interactive project that drives Manchester’s collective creativity. The commissioned project will use disruptive, open source or social technologies to aggregate and maximise Manchester’s resources. It will catalyse, facilitate and forge links between disconnected communities through a series of physical and virtual activities. It will facilitate better communication between two or more social groups and provide tools to visualise this interaction.

The project will be co-designed with its users and have the potential to live on after the commissioned project is over. The winning project will be supported, not driven, by technology.

The deadline for submissions was last Friday and the b.TWEEN website has now been updated with around 40 ’seed ideas’. It’s worth taking some time to browse the entries and see what some of Manchester’s creative minds are coming up with. These four are of particular interest to me:

• People’s Voice Media – a collaboration between local artists and community reporters
• Arc Space – a cluster of reconditioned computers based in Hulme
• Beyond the Wall – a democratic music scene system, presented by Band on the Wall
• Manchester Underground – a ‘participatory mobile phone film game’

Visitors are invited to vote for their favourite ideas in order to see them developed further.

So a warm welcome to my fellow Guardian readers – feel free to subscribe by email or leave a comment if you like the place. And regular Mancubist readers, check out the other sites to be blogrolled here.

Meanwhile, back to the usual Manchester miscellany: someone on urban exporation website 28dayslater.co.uk has done a recce of what they call ‘Manchester Underground’ – a series of air raid shelters under the city, accord to this poster:

There are 17 shelters in all and most of them have sub sections A. B. C etc… these are joined by one long corridor… there are numerous blocked up exits and stair wells… but the most jaw dropping feature was the toilets, the whole place was maze of small wonders…

Check out the rest of these excellent photos here.

I think it’s more a case that people have been unusually slow to react, however: Manchester Clubbing has found a few videos on YouTube, for example, and Mamucium is already talking about the aftermath – including looting and an inquiry into the blaze.

On If you’re sad and like beer, Kate posted a very personal first-hand account of that firey morning – and about not knowing what to do when your office is full of smoke. She’s followed it up too, with some of the confusing lines those involved are being fed:

Different degrees of destruction; the sprinklers went off, the fire spread, the smoke damaged, just looks like someone had a really good party, smells a bit, needs demolition, the chimney’s unstable, the roof might cave in. You’ll be let in next week, you won’t get in for a fortnight, closed for three months, you have half an hour to go in and grab your stuff. Dramatic access by torchlight up dark stairwells flanked by fire officers.

Morag over at Twangorama is appealing for help. The Basement on Lever Street avoided the fire but suffered smoke and flood damage from the sprinkler system.

Some of us were able to briefly go in and salvage important items; the scene that greeted us was grim but rather less apocalyptic than we first feared. There were puddles of water rather than the 2 metres we were warned about but many books, leaflets and art works are well beyond repair. Ceiling tiles have come down and we can not yet be sure how badly affected the IT hub and kitchen are.

They need any help on offer, including cleaning up the place and donations to cover an inevitable insurance shortfall. You can register your support on the Basement website.

CIDS continues to take a strong lead in the situation and has now published a list of temporary and permanently office space available for those displaced. I guess the mashup of Manchester’s wireless hotspots might come in hand right now too.

Peter Hook… on New Order, the anniversary of the Hac and the new Ian Curtis movie… by Nigel Pivaro
May Day Special: Guest writer Peggy Seeger on Ewan MacColl and his Salford anthem, Dirty Old Town
The sad plight of the rare Salford Butterfly… guess who’s trashing his home?
The great affordable homes scandal… read it with a brown paper bag by yer side
Living on the front line in Higher Broughton – as Salford Council is slammed and damned
Easter Special: the new ‘non faith’ academy… run by hardcore Christians

Plus…
Could you run the council better than this lot ? Try our great pre-election gameshow where you could win lottsa ££££s and sad school kids…
The Suzuki Method… Lawrence Cassidy… the regen beauty contest in Langworthy… the miffed Mayor of Salford and loads more… a free 68 page bumper spring special!

A subscription of six issues costs £20 – and you get a free Salford Star tshirt too.

The magazine is now sponsorred by Private Eye and the Guardian, having recently won two awards and been longlisted for the Paul Foot Award for campaigning journalism. Not bad for a magazine that started less than a year ago.

Last month Media Guardian profiled the community magazine, pointing out that co-editor Stephen Kington was nominated for the Paul Foot award for investigative journalism.

They also put together a fancy audio slideshow of The Lowry ’sting’ from the Star’s inaugural issue – have a look and a listen.

In response, comments on the Salford Star’s blog make for interesting reading – both for and against the article and magazine generally.

When the musician Robert Forster was approached to become the music critic for a new magazine, The Monthly, last year, his writer’s resume consisted of one entry: a column on hair care he penned for a Manchester fanzine called Debris in the late 1980s.

This piqued my interest, especially when I found a BBC Manchester interview with John Cooper, who runs the Cerysmatic Factory website mentioned in the last post, that included this quote:

Manchester has a great fanzine heritage with City Fun, Debris, Freaky Dancin’, Manchester Rains, to name but a few.

Turns out Debris was started by enduring Factory DJ Dave Haslam and featured flexidiscs (remember them?) by bands like Inspiral Carpets and interviews with people like Morrissey and Johnny Marr.

According to Dave, NME described it as “the best fanzine in the world”.

Another zine at the time was Badpress, which was also established because of “the personal fury of one editor/writer for the media, especially the local print media, of the day”. You can read more about Badpress and view PDFs of it here.

So how does Manchester’s fanzine culture compare these days? We’ve got regular, well-produced titles like Transmission and High Voltage, as well as any number of occasional or one-off zines.

Manchester’s alternative radical press is still highly active too, as a visit to The Basement on Lever Street will quickly demonstrate. And the same venue, back in February, even hosted a Zine Fest.

Oh, and just so you know, Forster’s hair care piece (from issue 16, December 1987) included this excellent recommendation:

The Shampoo question puzzled me for years until I discovered Redken. I call it ‘the shampoo of the stars’.

Full feature available here.

The bumper 60 page Aug/Sept issue of Salford Star is out now featuring…

* Urban Cash – we take the roof off the Urban Splash `upside down’ terraced house `reinvention’ in Seedley/Langworthy to see where all the public money’s going…and residents tell of the Fight For Salford’s Future..

* John Cooper Clarke – it’s legend time as Salford’s people’s poet unleashes his `tarted up’ version of Beezley Street…now `Beezley Boulevard’. We print the whole poem exclusively.

* The Car Park Built By George Best and Co – yes, Georgie Boy got out his shovel and concrete and helped build the car park at United’s Cliff training ground. Exclusive by ex-United star, John Aston.

* Steve Foster – Salford’s only World Boxing Champ on following in the footsteps of his famous dad, The Viking…

Plus new Salford sounds, films, theatre, art, verse and a sizzling soaraway day-by-day guide to all that’s happening in the Tinny City…

The Salford Star is free, delivered to 12,000 homes in East Salford and available at all good pubs, bookies, launderettes, cafes, shops and public spaces…

See www.salfordstar.com for full information.