UMIST site renamed Sister: other central areas to be called Mummy and Nan

Sleuth 1 October 2024

Sleuth reports on the hot branding news revealing people have lost their minds

Following the rebranding of ID Manchester, the former UMIST site, as Sister and apparently not as a joke, the agency responsible, Seven Hills, has issued further information about rebranding other areas of the city along similar lines.

A spokesperson for Seven Hills said: “The First Street area including HOME Arts Centre should obviously be called Mummy, Media City should be Auntie and the way is clear for the proposed redevelopment area of Holt Town to be called Our Nan. The whole of Salford should obviously become ‘alright ‘r Kid’, Duh. No brainer really.

“As a London-based agency, we at Seven Hills are very keen to repeat buzzwords such as diversity, sustainability, community, innovation, inclusion, equity (hey, have I got them all?) in order to win branding contracts worth tens of thousands of pounds from gullible provincial clients such as Bruntwood SciTech, Manchester City Council and the University of Manchester.

You might as well have called the old UMIST site Jane or Turtle or Dandelion

The spokesman from Seven Ills continued with: “Critics who have laughed at the rebranding of ID Manchester as Sister seem to have forgotten the popular, citizen-wide appeal, of other successful Manchester placemaking rebranding schemes such as NOMA, Corridor, Millennium Quarter, Petersfield and even individual buildings such The Triangle and Aviva Studios.”

At which point Sleuth can report all the Manchester residents, locals, most business people and visitors cried: “Are you mad? Where are these places? Are they only known to people in the property sector? Didn’t the Triangle revert to The Corn Exchange because the name didn’t mean anything? Shouldn’t NOMA be really MISNOMA because it didn’t mean anything? Corridor is the most boring place in a building so why call the amazing Oxford Road that? Nobody says Millennium Quarter or Petersfield.

"BUT this one takes the biscuit. Why have you called the former UMIST site Sister for God’s sake?”

2024 10 01 Sister Masterplan — **The proposed masterplan** Image: University of Manchester

Just Taken Seven Pills said: “Here is the explanation from our official press release. ‘The name, Sister, represents the close bond between industry and academia and expresses an ethos of collaboration, openness and the use of knowledge to solve problems’.”

Then all the Manchester residents, locals, most business people and visitors cried: “No it doesn’t. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it represents: ‘a woman or girl in relation to other daughters and sons of her parents’. It simply does not express a place with ‘an ethos of collaboration, openness and the use of knowledge to solve problems’. You might as well have called the old UMIST site Jane or Turtle or Dandelion.”

Seven Thrills said: “You lot are really fucking thick aren’t you? But here’s another reason we have dug up to reverse engineer a justification although you probably won’t understand it.

“The name Sister itself isn’t an acronym, but it’s inspired by an acronym we found in the UMIST archives. In the early 1960s, the government published the Robbins report. That report made a number of recommendations, and all were accepted by the government, bar one which was rejected. The authors had called for the creation of three Special Institutions for Scientific and Technological Education and Research (SISTER), with the first being housed at UMIST. Today, Sister is bringing the ideas of this proposal to fruition, by bringing together industry and academia.”

2024 10 01 Sister Body Pic — **Residents, locals, most business people and visitors wonder where they are** Image: University of Manchester

Then all the Manchester residents, locals, most business people and visitors cried: “Why name the place after something that failed, if that really is the reason? And as branding specialists you really don’t understand branding do you? You’ve created a reason behind the name so complicated you need a minimum of 100 words to explain just a bit of it.”

Seven Hills at that point went into a sulk and said: “Well, at least Sister is a diverse corrective against the aggressively chauvinistic name of MANchester”. To underline that diversity at the launch of the new branding on 26 September Seven Hills had explained the name Sister to a group of property people who were mainly male and middle-aged and living in big houses in the suburbs but desperately worried about being seen as male and middle-aged and coming from big houses in the suburbs.

Meanwhile all the rest of the Manchester residents, locals and most business people and visitors remain clueless as to why such a senseless, contextless name has been adopted for such an important city centre district of nine acres. Why not call the former UMIST site Medlock or Granby? Spinningfields works because it's a new part of the city with a real name rooted in context geography.

Seven Hills quickly recovered from the sulk and went laughing all the way to the bank.

Confidentials.com repeats that it would sincerely wish the adoption of the name Sister was a joke but sadly it really isn't. Click here for the horror.

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