A top performance poet who is the current Superhero of Slam champion also happens to have taken around 80,000 photographs in the last eight years - and on Wednesday 28 November he will be auctioning some of them for charity in Manchester. Mark Mace Smith, who is also a former Glastonbury slam winner and BBC slam finalist, as well as being a painter, photographer, actor and musician, has some of his photographs and 13 paintings on show this month at Z-Arts in Hulme, (formerly Zion Arts Centre), as part of the Manchester Artists Inaugural Exhibition. He prides himself on never digitally manipulating his photographs, which include this one of kids at play in a back alley in Rusholme. 

Mark takes his poetry and other skills and puts them to work with “hard to reach” teenagers and adults. Wednesday’s charity auction is for Mothers Against Violence, from 6-9pm, and Mark will be performing his Thud Dub poetry there. 

PHOTOGRAPH: MARK MACE SMITH