Winter Makers Market at PHM

The Winter Makers Market opens the festive season at the People’s History Museum. Handmade gifts, crafts, pop-up entertainment and workshops, with Gather, the museum café, on hand for something warm once you have done a circuit. It sits on the Left Bank in Spinningfields, by the river, in a museum that already knows how to hold a crowd without feeling like a shopping centre.

The market runs from 21 to 23 November, and entry is free. Independent makers are the point: presents from people who made them, wrapping you do not have to feel sheepish about, and a workshop if you would rather leave with a skill than a carrier bag. The museum around the stalls is worth the detour upstairs if a queue at your favourite table gets long. Spinningfields is central, a flat walk from Deansgate. Saturday and Sunday will be the busy ones. Monday 23 November is the quieter circuit if you can take it, with more time to talk to the people behind the tables. Ask who made the thing. That conversation is the difference between this and a chain, and it is free along with the entry.