Shallows Studio: Meet Alana

Our new style of videos launches with a series on Shallows Studio in the Gay Village, and a chat with the brilliant Alana.

Transcript

00:00Hi I'm Theo with Manchester World and today I'm on my way to Shallows Studio.

00:03Essentially it's this really cool creative space where people can get

00:07tattoos, get piercings, get their nails done. It feels like a perfect expression

00:10of Manchester. So I'm at Shallows now which is a really great artist-led studio here

00:15in the gay village and this is sort of the start of a new style of video for us.

00:18Instead of me coming here and telling you what I like about the place, we're

00:21gonna do a number of videos where we talk to some of the people that make

00:24this place what it is, about why it's special and why Manchester is the

00:28perfect place for it. So today we're gonna start with Alana.

00:31Hi I'm Alana, I'm a tattoo artist at Shallows in Manchester. I think I started

00:36doing paintings and stuff and selling them in lockdown and then yeah after

00:41lockdown I saw there was an apprenticeship going near me and I was like oh go on then.

00:43And my mum's like covering tattoos so we grew up seeing her get more and more and more and I was just like that's pretty cool.

00:50I was shaking like a leaf. It was my mum so I did like three kisses on her hand, we all have them.

00:55And I literally, it was like I was shaking that much. I was doing this, oh I'm not ready yet.

01:01I would say for me it's the people here. It's a very like queer friendly space, everyone's like

01:08very individual and like there is no one who is not accepted here. I think that's what I love.

01:13We are such a, it's such a queer village, village? Town? And that's growing and I think the kind of

01:21faces you see around here as well, this is like, it's almost like a little like a flicker of what

01:26Manchester is I think here. So I think yeah, I think it's just more Manchester. I obviously being queer myself, I came out

01:33quite a late age to be fair so I think then coming and working here in the centre and being around it

01:38all the time, it's very refreshing and it's just nice. You see it everywhere, it's like oh I feel

01:43represented now. It's very like supportive so we are our own businesses, they help you grow as a

01:49business, you have your independence but you also feel like you're part of a team. That's another

01:53thing I actually love about working here is they give you independence and they just, they help you

01:57flourish so yeah, I love working here, it's great.