An Inheritance is a gift, created by the children of today for children one hundred years in the future. Consisting of 11 precious objects, 840 pieces of knowledge and a video message written and delivered by the children themselves, it offers a snapshot of how young people today envisage the future and what they think children in one hundred years’ time will need to survive and flourish.

Developed over 18 months in collaboratoin with Aotearoa artist Rosabel Tan and through working with more than 400 children from across Greater Manchester, An Inheritance invites us all to consider our lives today and the lives of people in the future.

The project is our attempt to begin reconfiguring our relationship to the future. To move beyond what Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen memorably called 'the dictatorship of the present' and to think about what it might mean to be a good ancestor.

But the piece is also inevitably a portrait of the present day and the children that took part - in the great tradition of time capsules that we grew up making in the 90s.

The inheritance will be on display from July 4 until November 2025, at which point it will be carefully packed away until 2125, when it will be presented again at the gallery to its intended recipients.

Created by Andy Field, Beckie Darlington and Rosabel Tan 
Exhibition Design by IF_DO
Sound Design by Lachlan Anderson
Graphic Design by Extended Whānau
Colour grading by Mike Myshko

Commissioned and produced by Factory International for Manchester International Festival 2025. Developed with year 5 pupils from schools across Greater Manchester