You think you know New Mills? Look again

A Peak District photographer has expressed his surprise to be staging an exhibition with a high-profile poet after a chance meeting on X.

Andrew Brooks, who lives in New Mills, met Ian McMillan, when the poet and BBC broadcaster contacted him to purchase some greetings cards. McMillan said he had been admiring his work on the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, for a while and wanted to buy something featuring Brooks’ images.

After exchanging messages for some months, the pair decided to take up a year-long creative correspondence across the Pennines, inspired by the daily whimsical tweets made by McMillan, known as the bard of Barnsley, on his early morning strolls.

Discovering a shared fascination with what’s on their doorsteps, their project, called The Songs The Morning Sang, uses a mix of words and pictures to tell shared stories about Brooks’ pre-dawn High Peak neighbourhood.

To capture the perfect shots, Brooks set out at 5am each day with his camera, taking hundreds of pictures within two miles of his front door. After each walk, he then shared his pictures with McMillan, who responded to the images of his choice, building narrative into each with an unexpected micro-story.

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, their exhibition, at The Portico Library in Manchester from 6 June-27 September 2025, features a series of 25 pieces, each an interaction between Andrew's photographic images of New Mills and Ian's lyrical responses. The exhibition is part of the Manchester City of Literature Festival of Libraries and is free to attend.

An old phone box, a deflated red whoopee cushion and a circular security light against a brick wall become something else entirely as Ian's words shift the meanings of Andrew’s pictures, telling magical stories about everyday objects and scenes. The phone box receives a call from a mystery singer, the red rubber toy is a fallen planet, and the light, a moon against a brick sky.

On Saturday 14 June 2025, McMillan and Brooks are inviting people to join them for the first World Early Stroll Day and kickstart their morning by documenting a mindful local walk. Creative responses in words, pictures, sound recordings, drawings and any other artform can be shared across X, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #WorldEarlyStrollDay.

Brooks said: "Reading Ian’s early stroll tweets has become part of my morning routine and is an inspiring start to the day. Knowing someone’s already been out there responding to the world and creating shows to us that a day is full of possibilities and new ideas.

"This call and response project is based on the morning walk around each of our local streets. The glimpsed details in Ian’s writing share a sense of strangeness in the everyday and feel like snapshots of the world.

"I use these written snapshots as inspiration for how I photograph the streets near where I live in New Mills. Then it’s fascinating to see how Ian responds in his writing, what he pulls out of these photographs, building on the half-seen ideas and images I couldn’t quite put into words."

McMillan said: "Every morning I get up at 5am and go for my early stroll, always taking the same route around Darfield, the village near Barnsley where I’ve always lived.

"For me, as for many people, this is the best time of the day. Nothing much has happened yet and it feels like almost anything might happen.

"Then I tweet about what I’ve seen; five sentences, five observations, five new ways of seeing and thinking. Always the same stroll, always new ways to describe it. The tweets are like tiny poems or stories or essays on life in the 21st century in an unremarkable part of the world.

"So, when Andrew and I started thinking about a collaboration in 2023, 'early strolls' seemed like an obvious and shining choice. Andrew would go on his own strolls, and I would make tiny poems from his images; it meant that I would have to think harder because I was outside the A to Z that I’ve known since childhood. My 'early stroll' language had to find a way into somewhere new at sunrise."

The Songs The Morning Sang is at The Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3HY from 6 June-27 September 2025. The library is closed on Sundays