More than 3,000 members of the public will play a part in marking the Peterloo massacre on the 200th anniversary of the bloody protest for parliamentary reform and political representation at St Peter’s Field in Manchester.

There will be no passive spectators at From the Crowd, an immersive experience which will weave together eyewitness accounts of those present at Peterloo in 1819 and the words of contemporary protesters and poets.

Described as a dialogue between 1819 and 2019, three repeat performances will each bring together 1,000 members of the public with about 150 musicians, performers and volunteers to amplify the story of Peterloo and its legacy.

Audiences will bathe in 360-degree sound, with music composed and directed by a member of Dutch Uncles, Manchester’s champions of complex, oddball pop.

“The piece explores the power of the crowd, the sense of the unexpected and the galvanising solidarity that manifests when people are together as one. We’ll be remembering those that protested and lost their lives at Peterloo and those whose lives today are affected by different oppressions,” said Evie Manning, From the Crowd’s creative director.

Helping to lead the participants will be 100 people who have volunteered to be “Laurels”. They are a reminder that Peterloo was a peaceful protest, named after one group of marchers who made their way to St Peter’s Field from Middleton carrying branches of laurel as a symbol of peace along with banners that told of their purpose, including “Liberty and fraternity” and “Suffrage universal”. Among those taking on the role of being a Laurel are a number of direct descendants of the 60,000 people present in 1819.

Quick guide What was the Peterloo massacre? Show Hide What was the Peterloo Massacre and how many were killed? On 16 August 1819, up to 60,000 working class people from the towns and villages of what is now Greater Manchester marched to St Peters Fields in central Manchester to demand political representation. Their peaceful protest turned bloody when Manchester magistrates ordered Yeoman – a private militia paid for by rich locals – to storm the crowd with sabres. Most historians agree that 14 people were definitely killed in the massacre – 15 if you include the unborn child of Elizabeth Gaunt, killed in the womb after she was beaten by constables in custody. A further three named people are believed to have either been stabbed or trampled to death. Why is it called Peterloo? The name was first coined five days after the massacre by James Wroe, editor of the Manchester Observer, the city’s first radical newspaper (no relation to the Observer of today). According to historian Robert Poole, Peterloo was “a bitter pun, comparing the cowardly attacks by the Yeomanry and soldiers on unarmed civilians to the brutality suffered at Waterloo.” What did the protesters want? They wanted political reform. The years leading up to Peterloo had been tough for working class people and they wanted a voice in parliament to put their needs and wants on the political agenda, inspired by the French Revolution across the Channel. Machines had begun to take jobs in the lucrative cotton industry but periodic trade slumps closed factories at short notice, putting workers out on the street. The Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo, had taken a heavy toll on the nation’s finances, and 350,000 ex-servicemen returned home needing jobs and food. Yet those in power seemed more interested in lining their own pockets than helping the poor. At that point, only the richest landowners could vote, and large swathes of the country were not represented in Westminster. Manchester and Salford, which then had a population of 150,000, had no MP, yet Oxford and Cambridge Universities had their own representation. At the time the extension of the vote to all men, let alone women, was actively opposed by many who thought the vote should be restricted to those of influence and means. Why is Peterloo important? It paved the way for parliamentary democracy and particularly the Great Reform Act of 1832 which created new parliamentary seats, particularly in the industrial towns of the north of England. It also led to the establishment two years later of the Manchester Guardian by John Edward Taylor, a 28-year-old English journalist who was present at the massacre and saw how the “establishment” media sought to discredit the protesters. Helen Pidd, North of England editor Photograph: Rischgitz/Hulton Archive

Free tickets will be released on 25 July for three performances on the day, in which visitors can play their part by reading from scripted lines printed onto entry wristbands.

At 1.30pm – the time the cavalry charged the crowd 200 years ago – the annual reading of the names will take place, while musicians Streetwise Opera, Aziz Ibrahim and Commoners Choir will perform throughout the day.

Karen Shannon, the head of the charity Manchester Histories, says: “The Peterloo massacre is a globally significant milestone in the history of democracy that also set Manchester’s path as a radical city of progress, change and where equality is championed.”

The Peterloo massacre led to the establishment of the Guardian, after reporter John Edward Taylor correctly feared that without the account of a journalist on the scene, Londoners would get only the official version of events, which would protect the magistrates who had caused the bloodshed.

After reporting doggedly on the protests for months in the massacre’s aftermath, Taylor founded the Manchester Guardian in 1821.