I recall working at a community event in Ardwick during the 2015 MIF and talking with an American guy whose wife was going to see the Richter/Part concert & exhibition. As we watched local kids having a joyful kickabout with a sports coach provided by the event, we both commented on MIF's seeming lack of connection to these kids and their lives. Unfortunately, this still seems to be the case. Where is the evidence that the festival has really, really asked local residents what they want to see as part of the festival? Another depressing aspect was the regularity of the same people popping up (step forward Damon Albarn, Maxine Peake etc). With a whole globe of culture to choose from you'd have assumed each festival would be entirely new. Speaking of 'new', for a festival that was supposedly all about commissioning new work, we've also had artists seemingly touring their latest albums ie Kanye West/Graduation and Bjork/Vulnicura. I've been a 'culture vulture' all my life, ever since my mum took me to the Royal Exchange aged six, but, sadly, MIF just leaves me completely cold. I really wish that wasn't the case.
“ Where is the evidence that the festival has really, really asked local residents what they want to see as part of the festival? ”
There’s loads if you look for it, the Factory has by far the biggest cultural engagement team in Manchester (probably the country but you’d have to check) and gets thousands of people involved every MIF both during and in the run up to the Festival. You just have to look at how festival square is programmed by partnering with local record labels and music nights.
Because I can read and use google? I’m a big MIF fan but I don’t work there, everything above can be found on the website in three clicks…
You’ve suggested in a separate comment that the money spent on Factory could fund regional theatre for years to come, which I ignored, but since you’ve commented here - whether you like it or not that money wouldn’t be in Manchester were it not for the building existing. Naive to think otherwise
I don't think that's true. I'm not an artist myself but I was working with various community artists at the the time the decision was made to fund the Factory through the Arts Council, and their view was that money came directly from funding that would have otherwise been spent on community arts. Obviously, there's funding that has been put into the Factory other than from the Arts Council but personally I am yet to be convinced that it is money well spent. It seems part of Manchester's continuing cultural policy of funding stuff for visitors rather than for people who live in the poorer neighbourhoods of Manchester. There seems to be a view that everyone will benefit through some kind of trickle down mechanism known as outreach but, in my experience, this was no more successful than the economic theory of trickle down. The number of people who benefit is very small.
That may well have been the view of community artists but £78 million of this building has come directly from Government capital funding, that is undeniably money that wouldn’t be in Manchester otherwise. I believe there’s also 30 million of ACE funding to support the building over the next few years, at a time when ACE funding in the North West generally is also increasing.
I don’t believe in trickle down theories either but the evidence that MIF are attempting to engage and educate ‘poorer neighbourhoods’ as you put it is there, thousands of free tickets distributed, volunteers and participants from all wards in the city.
I’m reminded of Dave Moutreys comment, this is a national project in Manchester and whilst it’s important that the benefits of this building are shared many of the objectives would not be achieved by simply giving more money to existing offers.
I acknowledge that a lot of capital funding has been put into the Factory that otherwise would probably have not been spent in Manchester. Unfortunately, Manchester City Council has also had to "bail out" the Factory and this money would have been spent elsewhere in Manchester. Arts Council funding is revenue funding and used to employ staff and has to be ongoing and this is the funding lost to the community sector (possibly on an ongoing basis, you may know better than I). I was a community development worker for many years. Involving people in city centre projects and inviting them to attend them doesn't really make any difference to the development of poorer neighbourhoods (not sure what term you would prefer) and the biggest issue, in my view, in Manchester, is the massive economic disparity between neighbourhoods in Manchester. This is not to say that we shouldn't also have great venues in the centre of Manchester.
I’m not impressed by the fact that the Factory has the biggest cultural engagement team in the country. This just adds to my view that it’s much about an expensive venue and team and not much about the offer. If you have an accessible and participatory cultural programme then people will come and engage.
The building is literally opening with a programme called the Factory Welcome which in their own words is ‘’A spectacular series of special events and performances chosen by the people of Greater Manchester.’
Participatory work has run through every MIF and like I said thousands of people do engage. Find the criticism strange when you clearly haven’t bothered to look at what they actually do.
I have been to a number of MIF events over the years and take a great interest in what they do. I would love to know more about how ‘the performances are chosen by the people of Greater Manchester’ Do you work there and could tell me?
I don’t but again the answer is just there on the website. For somebody that takes a great interest in what they do you haven’t bothered to do the most basic bit of research before making your judgement.
‘The programme’s more than a year in the making, with our wonderful group of local residents – the Factory Assembly – calling the shots and developing the entire series of events just for you.
They’ve working closely with our team, as well as with acclaimed artists here and abroad to put together a programme that includes the best of circus, music, fashion, food, exhibitions and more.
We set out to experiment, play, go all out. We asked locals, if you had the run of this place, what would you do? Who would you invite?
Who are the Factory Assembly?
We’re an amazingly diverse group of people aged 17-70 from across Greater Manchester. Most of us don’t have a background in the arts but we all have a passion for the city, our local communities and for bringing people together to have fun.’
When I talked to one of the engagement team in person, it became clear that the main programme of festival events were selected 'from above' and that local people's engagement and input was limited to, for want of a better word, 'fringe' events.
Really nicely done piece, and a great prompt for a (mostly) thoughtful and (mostly) respectful comments discussion. I'm indebted to the members pointing to the Fringe; I've been an immigrant to Manchester from down South for more than two decades, I thought I voraciously consumed and enthusiastically supported arts orgs all over the city, and I had (embarrassingly) never heard of the Fringe. Putting my education on that right, right now.
The only time I attended an event at MIF was when I was participating in it. It was in 2019. New music to commemorate 100th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre was commissioned -and the community choir of which I was a member was invited to sing part of it along with the Halle Choir, Halle Youth Choir and BBC Singers and BBC Orchestra. It was a fantastic experience, although the music was difficult to learn as it was very avant-garde. To be honest, I don't think I would have thought of attending it had there not been that opportunity to contribute. I never could resist a challenge.
Maybe MIF needs to offer more events of a similar type to encourage participation from those who don't consider themselves to be cultural types and from those who live on the margins of society. MIF has much to learn from the Halle Society archives department which has been running some well-attended community groups drawn from all age groups and all sections of society.
Lots to unpick here, from McGrath skirting the edges of real meaning in his answers, to pints for £4 (we went to Festival Square to see ACR on Friday - pints at the beer vending machines were £5.90, those at the bar inside were £6.50) and whether MIF is able to engage beyond its immediate captive audience.
You might spend millions on a building but if even the people who think of themselves as your audience can't be bothered navigating your programme and booking system, all you've got is a white elephant. I could rattle on about the eroding effect of years of struggling with online booking and opaque publicity on whether I can be bothered to engage with MIF but I'll restrain myself! McGrath's pondering of the frustration around people not engaging caught my attention.
I'd like to see MIF do more co-production with communities - that might help make a deeper connection with people who live on their doorstep in places that don't receive the same levels of arts funding. It's what their youth programme should be ideal for.
I find McGrath saying "we're all doing what we do because we feel it's joyous" very inward looking. Those barriers to people not engaging with the content probably stem from the team not doing what they do because their audience (actual and potential) feels it's joyous, or because they can't explain to their audience why it's joyous. I worked for a museum director once whose first question when presented with a pitch for exhibition or event content was "Why should I care?" It's a fair question.
I got a better sense of 'Economics the Blockbuster' from Sophie's experience of it, and her asking why she should care, than from any of the official blurb - it sounds like Kate Raworth's book made art and now I might visit. Raworth's book Doughnut Economics is worth a read, by the way, even if you don't think you're interested in economics - it relates theory to how we live and explains why governments get it wrong in really clear terms. If you have 15 minutes-worth of interest available, her 2018 TED talk is a good overview https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow
I think MIF accepted George Osborne’s shilling (not even half enough, as it turned out) at the expense of its own identity.
Punchdrunk in a soon-to-be-demolished office block, Kraftwerk in the Velodrome, Massive Attack in Mayfield Depot. You didn’t have to like all the shows (I didn’t) to get the Festival drift. So what does a perambulatory show runner want with a permanent space (& the associated heating bills, come to that)?
No matter how “flexible” Aviva Studios is, I can’t help feeling the whole shebang is surplus to requirements.
Watching Complicité’s production of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead some weeks back, I was reminded what a brilliant stage & theatre space the Lowry is. Its co-production record is second to none (War Horse, Taste of Honey, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). There are literally dozens of Venus & performance spaces in our region with capacity, expertise & needs. I worry MIF can survive the need for programme and revenues that Aviva Studios lands upon it. I hope I’m wrong.
Frankly I prefer to the more modest Manchester Fesival that Phil Jones, Ruth Flaote and others used to runi n 1980s and early 90s...it even had a fringe,... Seems to have been wipted from memory has the large scale 1973 Festival which included Mikis Theodarakis, a Queen of the Festival, a parade and was even featured on Coronation Street.
We have the Greater Manchester Fringe for that, lots of people preview their Edinburgh Fringe shows here - as well as local people just doing their own stuff. Shame it seems to go so under the radar https://www.greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk/
I’ve always found MIF an interesting proposition, I’ve spent countless hours over each festival thoroughly enjoying Festival Square and it’s range of free music/performances/DJs... it creates a real heart in the city for a few weeks and a festival atmosphere. But having seen quite a lot of work over the years at the festival I can barely count on one hand the number of shows I feel have truly resonated with me - and I’m the arty glasses wearing type with a penchant for the avant garde.
I think when people like myself struggle to fully understand what a show actually is from it’s description in the programme or on the website it doesn’t instil a huge amount of confidence about the accessibility of the work shown at the festival or in the future at The Factory.
I’m currently reserving judgment on the building itself until I’ve seen the multiplicity of uses it claims to have, but I was astonished by the scale of the warehouse space for the Kusama exhibition. Manchester and indeed the country need more spaces like that to hold art works of such a scale that are not just the turbine hall at Tate Modern. I felt the exhibition itself was somewhat one-dimensional and didn’t invoke much in the way of a response in me. Though I did enjoy lying on a cloud for around 20 minutes.
However KAGAMI is one of the most beautiful experiences I think I have ever had, incredibly moving and poignant. The ability to be as close to Sakamoto as you like, to wander around him in the space was a technological marvel and the kind of work MIF should excel at. There were moments that truly took my breath away and brought me to tears.
Also fully recommend Tino Seghal at the National Football Museum, if you have a good hour or so to kill and feel like some calming and meditative performance art you’ll thoroughly enjoy it.
Thanks for this piece. I am glad that it took a more positive slant towards the end. I love MIF and can’t wait to see the ‘You, Me and the Balloons’ at Factory International / Aviva Studios. I get that people want diverse audiences, but I think that there is a balance. I feel that Manchester Art Gallery has gone too far away from focusing on great art in their efforts to find the right balance. I’ve just come back from Vienna, which is stuffed full of world class art galleries, museums and classical music venues. If we want to be a world class city then we should get on with building world class venues. After all ‘the hacienda must be built.’
I love theatre and art but every year the MIF programme leaves me cold. It's always frustrated me that the Greater Manchester Fringe doesn't seem to benefit from MIF or have joined up advertising or anything like that. It has a much more accessible (and cheap) programme, but almost nobody seems to know about it.
Put the two together and you'd have a really good arts festival in this city.
I am baffled. As a mature resident of Manchester who enjoys the arts this venture doesn’t seem to have anything too say to me. I don’t understand the finance of it all but I do know English National Opera is on its knees, the BBC orchestras face the looming shadow of cut backs and the BBC Singers only just reprieved. These have given pleasure over decades. MIF seems to consist of people who talk with enthusiasm and vigour - but just to themselves?
An interesting piece - it didn't sit comfortably with me, mainly as it struck a bit of a raw nerve. I've always really enjoyed the festival and have been a massive advocate for it. I've seen some amazing world-class pieces over the years as well as discovered some amazing local grassroots talent on Festival Square, but I agree, I'm a little baffled (and underwhelmed) by the festival this year. I feel like I've been waiting for months for something more, especially given the exorbitant investment in the physical space, but it's not come. Like others, I'm really looking forward to seeing Yayoi, but feel that it's gained a disproportionately high amount of coverage and it feels as if Manchester is pinning all its hopes and dreams to this one exhibition! Perhaps my views will change when I get to Festival Square but I don't feel compelled to get down there tbh.
Good article and heartening to see you ended being hopeful about the venue. MIF has always put on shows that you would ‘struggle to think of anybody that would enjoy them’ but have managed to balance them alongside things you could take anybody to with no previous experience of the arts and they would love.
Given the article is titled ‘what is the venue actually for?’ There’s nothing in here about Factory Academy or the GM cultural skills consortium set up 2018, which has offered thousands of people free training and aims to develop future creative professionals. That was a big part of why the building was conceived, why it exists and what it’s trying to do. Worth revisiting…
I think MIF have done plenty to get their name and the broad sweep of work out there over the years. If people aren't looking at the adverts on billboards and streetlights, if they're not aware of Albert Square turning into a three ring circus for a month every other year, if they're not engaging with the city's cultural programming more broadly, I don't know that you can force them to. Personally, the opportunity to see highlights like the Massive Attack/Adam Curtis concert/film, or Tree of Codes, or Tao of Glass - or high-status failures like Baryshnikov lying on the floor screaming his way through The Old Woman or Into the Woods with Charlotte Rampling apparently never having read the script - is something that wasn't otherwise available.
Fwiw I think this sort of prestigious swinging for the fences is what the venue is 'for' - tricky stuff at scale, with cheap tickets. I don't think it's more deserving of funding than Oldham Coliseum, but I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I'm definitely more excited for the programming at Factory/whatever name we all settle on than I have been for much of the Legz Akimbo dross Home have put on over the last few years
200 million pounds would have funded regional theate in Manchester (including saving the Oldham Coliseum) and community arts projects for decades. Suggest stopping passers-by in New Moston, Wythenshawe, and Clayton and askling them if they are going.
I hope the large and highly paid team quickly get to work in shaping an exciting offer going forward. I found the MIF programme limited and dull - also no dance as far as I could see!
I recall working at a community event in Ardwick during the 2015 MIF and talking with an American guy whose wife was going to see the Richter/Part concert & exhibition. As we watched local kids having a joyful kickabout with a sports coach provided by the event, we both commented on MIF's seeming lack of connection to these kids and their lives. Unfortunately, this still seems to be the case. Where is the evidence that the festival has really, really asked local residents what they want to see as part of the festival? Another depressing aspect was the regularity of the same people popping up (step forward Damon Albarn, Maxine Peake etc). With a whole globe of culture to choose from you'd have assumed each festival would be entirely new. Speaking of 'new', for a festival that was supposedly all about commissioning new work, we've also had artists seemingly touring their latest albums ie Kanye West/Graduation and Bjork/Vulnicura. I've been a 'culture vulture' all my life, ever since my mum took me to the Royal Exchange aged six, but, sadly, MIF just leaves me completely cold. I really wish that wasn't the case.
“ Where is the evidence that the festival has really, really asked local residents what they want to see as part of the festival? ”
There’s loads if you look for it, the Factory has by far the biggest cultural engagement team in Manchester (probably the country but you’d have to check) and gets thousands of people involved every MIF both during and in the run up to the Festival. You just have to look at how festival square is programmed by partnering with local record labels and music nights.
You must work for MIF..
Because I can read and use google? I’m a big MIF fan but I don’t work there, everything above can be found on the website in three clicks…
You’ve suggested in a separate comment that the money spent on Factory could fund regional theatre for years to come, which I ignored, but since you’ve commented here - whether you like it or not that money wouldn’t be in Manchester were it not for the building existing. Naive to think otherwise
I don't think that's true. I'm not an artist myself but I was working with various community artists at the the time the decision was made to fund the Factory through the Arts Council, and their view was that money came directly from funding that would have otherwise been spent on community arts. Obviously, there's funding that has been put into the Factory other than from the Arts Council but personally I am yet to be convinced that it is money well spent. It seems part of Manchester's continuing cultural policy of funding stuff for visitors rather than for people who live in the poorer neighbourhoods of Manchester. There seems to be a view that everyone will benefit through some kind of trickle down mechanism known as outreach but, in my experience, this was no more successful than the economic theory of trickle down. The number of people who benefit is very small.
That may well have been the view of community artists but £78 million of this building has come directly from Government capital funding, that is undeniably money that wouldn’t be in Manchester otherwise. I believe there’s also 30 million of ACE funding to support the building over the next few years, at a time when ACE funding in the North West generally is also increasing.
I don’t believe in trickle down theories either but the evidence that MIF are attempting to engage and educate ‘poorer neighbourhoods’ as you put it is there, thousands of free tickets distributed, volunteers and participants from all wards in the city.
I’m reminded of Dave Moutreys comment, this is a national project in Manchester and whilst it’s important that the benefits of this building are shared many of the objectives would not be achieved by simply giving more money to existing offers.
I acknowledge that a lot of capital funding has been put into the Factory that otherwise would probably have not been spent in Manchester. Unfortunately, Manchester City Council has also had to "bail out" the Factory and this money would have been spent elsewhere in Manchester. Arts Council funding is revenue funding and used to employ staff and has to be ongoing and this is the funding lost to the community sector (possibly on an ongoing basis, you may know better than I). I was a community development worker for many years. Involving people in city centre projects and inviting them to attend them doesn't really make any difference to the development of poorer neighbourhoods (not sure what term you would prefer) and the biggest issue, in my view, in Manchester, is the massive economic disparity between neighbourhoods in Manchester. This is not to say that we shouldn't also have great venues in the centre of Manchester.
I’m not impressed by the fact that the Factory has the biggest cultural engagement team in the country. This just adds to my view that it’s much about an expensive venue and team and not much about the offer. If you have an accessible and participatory cultural programme then people will come and engage.
The building is literally opening with a programme called the Factory Welcome which in their own words is ‘’A spectacular series of special events and performances chosen by the people of Greater Manchester.’
Participatory work has run through every MIF and like I said thousands of people do engage. Find the criticism strange when you clearly haven’t bothered to look at what they actually do.
I have been to a number of MIF events over the years and take a great interest in what they do. I would love to know more about how ‘the performances are chosen by the people of Greater Manchester’ Do you work there and could tell me?
I don’t but again the answer is just there on the website. For somebody that takes a great interest in what they do you haven’t bothered to do the most basic bit of research before making your judgement.
‘The programme’s more than a year in the making, with our wonderful group of local residents – the Factory Assembly – calling the shots and developing the entire series of events just for you.
They’ve working closely with our team, as well as with acclaimed artists here and abroad to put together a programme that includes the best of circus, music, fashion, food, exhibitions and more.
We set out to experiment, play, go all out. We asked locals, if you had the run of this place, what would you do? Who would you invite?
Who are the Factory Assembly?
We’re an amazingly diverse group of people aged 17-70 from across Greater Manchester. Most of us don’t have a background in the arts but we all have a passion for the city, our local communities and for bringing people together to have fun.’
When I talked to one of the engagement team in person, it became clear that the main programme of festival events were selected 'from above' and that local people's engagement and input was limited to, for want of a better word, 'fringe' events.
Yes, exactly this.
That final sentiment describes me too, admittedly having had much less exposure to it than you.
Really nicely done piece, and a great prompt for a (mostly) thoughtful and (mostly) respectful comments discussion. I'm indebted to the members pointing to the Fringe; I've been an immigrant to Manchester from down South for more than two decades, I thought I voraciously consumed and enthusiastically supported arts orgs all over the city, and I had (embarrassingly) never heard of the Fringe. Putting my education on that right, right now.
The only time I attended an event at MIF was when I was participating in it. It was in 2019. New music to commemorate 100th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre was commissioned -and the community choir of which I was a member was invited to sing part of it along with the Halle Choir, Halle Youth Choir and BBC Singers and BBC Orchestra. It was a fantastic experience, although the music was difficult to learn as it was very avant-garde. To be honest, I don't think I would have thought of attending it had there not been that opportunity to contribute. I never could resist a challenge.
Maybe MIF needs to offer more events of a similar type to encourage participation from those who don't consider themselves to be cultural types and from those who live on the margins of society. MIF has much to learn from the Halle Society archives department which has been running some well-attended community groups drawn from all age groups and all sections of society.
Lots to unpick here, from McGrath skirting the edges of real meaning in his answers, to pints for £4 (we went to Festival Square to see ACR on Friday - pints at the beer vending machines were £5.90, those at the bar inside were £6.50) and whether MIF is able to engage beyond its immediate captive audience.
You might spend millions on a building but if even the people who think of themselves as your audience can't be bothered navigating your programme and booking system, all you've got is a white elephant. I could rattle on about the eroding effect of years of struggling with online booking and opaque publicity on whether I can be bothered to engage with MIF but I'll restrain myself! McGrath's pondering of the frustration around people not engaging caught my attention.
I'd like to see MIF do more co-production with communities - that might help make a deeper connection with people who live on their doorstep in places that don't receive the same levels of arts funding. It's what their youth programme should be ideal for.
I find McGrath saying "we're all doing what we do because we feel it's joyous" very inward looking. Those barriers to people not engaging with the content probably stem from the team not doing what they do because their audience (actual and potential) feels it's joyous, or because they can't explain to their audience why it's joyous. I worked for a museum director once whose first question when presented with a pitch for exhibition or event content was "Why should I care?" It's a fair question.
I got a better sense of 'Economics the Blockbuster' from Sophie's experience of it, and her asking why she should care, than from any of the official blurb - it sounds like Kate Raworth's book made art and now I might visit. Raworth's book Doughnut Economics is worth a read, by the way, even if you don't think you're interested in economics - it relates theory to how we live and explains why governments get it wrong in really clear terms. If you have 15 minutes-worth of interest available, her 2018 TED talk is a good overview https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow
I think MIF accepted George Osborne’s shilling (not even half enough, as it turned out) at the expense of its own identity.
Punchdrunk in a soon-to-be-demolished office block, Kraftwerk in the Velodrome, Massive Attack in Mayfield Depot. You didn’t have to like all the shows (I didn’t) to get the Festival drift. So what does a perambulatory show runner want with a permanent space (& the associated heating bills, come to that)?
No matter how “flexible” Aviva Studios is, I can’t help feeling the whole shebang is surplus to requirements.
Watching Complicité’s production of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead some weeks back, I was reminded what a brilliant stage & theatre space the Lowry is. Its co-production record is second to none (War Horse, Taste of Honey, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). There are literally dozens of Venus & performance spaces in our region with capacity, expertise & needs. I worry MIF can survive the need for programme and revenues that Aviva Studios lands upon it. I hope I’m wrong.
Frankly I prefer to the more modest Manchester Fesival that Phil Jones, Ruth Flaote and others used to runi n 1980s and early 90s...it even had a fringe,... Seems to have been wipted from memory has the large scale 1973 Festival which included Mikis Theodarakis, a Queen of the Festival, a parade and was even featured on Coronation Street.
I'd like to see the return of comedy to MIF, as a sort of affordable (for the artists) pre Fringe Fringe.
We have the Greater Manchester Fringe for that, lots of people preview their Edinburgh Fringe shows here - as well as local people just doing their own stuff. Shame it seems to go so under the radar https://www.greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk/
Wow! Thanks David.
I’ve always found MIF an interesting proposition, I’ve spent countless hours over each festival thoroughly enjoying Festival Square and it’s range of free music/performances/DJs... it creates a real heart in the city for a few weeks and a festival atmosphere. But having seen quite a lot of work over the years at the festival I can barely count on one hand the number of shows I feel have truly resonated with me - and I’m the arty glasses wearing type with a penchant for the avant garde.
I think when people like myself struggle to fully understand what a show actually is from it’s description in the programme or on the website it doesn’t instil a huge amount of confidence about the accessibility of the work shown at the festival or in the future at The Factory.
I’m currently reserving judgment on the building itself until I’ve seen the multiplicity of uses it claims to have, but I was astonished by the scale of the warehouse space for the Kusama exhibition. Manchester and indeed the country need more spaces like that to hold art works of such a scale that are not just the turbine hall at Tate Modern. I felt the exhibition itself was somewhat one-dimensional and didn’t invoke much in the way of a response in me. Though I did enjoy lying on a cloud for around 20 minutes.
However KAGAMI is one of the most beautiful experiences I think I have ever had, incredibly moving and poignant. The ability to be as close to Sakamoto as you like, to wander around him in the space was a technological marvel and the kind of work MIF should excel at. There were moments that truly took my breath away and brought me to tears.
Also fully recommend Tino Seghal at the National Football Museum, if you have a good hour or so to kill and feel like some calming and meditative performance art you’ll thoroughly enjoy it.
Thanks for this piece. I am glad that it took a more positive slant towards the end. I love MIF and can’t wait to see the ‘You, Me and the Balloons’ at Factory International / Aviva Studios. I get that people want diverse audiences, but I think that there is a balance. I feel that Manchester Art Gallery has gone too far away from focusing on great art in their efforts to find the right balance. I’ve just come back from Vienna, which is stuffed full of world class art galleries, museums and classical music venues. If we want to be a world class city then we should get on with building world class venues. After all ‘the hacienda must be built.’
I love theatre and art but every year the MIF programme leaves me cold. It's always frustrated me that the Greater Manchester Fringe doesn't seem to benefit from MIF or have joined up advertising or anything like that. It has a much more accessible (and cheap) programme, but almost nobody seems to know about it.
Put the two together and you'd have a really good arts festival in this city.
It’s absolutely bonkers that MIF doesn’t support the fringe. Woefully under the radar.
I am baffled. As a mature resident of Manchester who enjoys the arts this venture doesn’t seem to have anything too say to me. I don’t understand the finance of it all but I do know English National Opera is on its knees, the BBC orchestras face the looming shadow of cut backs and the BBC Singers only just reprieved. These have given pleasure over decades. MIF seems to consist of people who talk with enthusiasm and vigour - but just to themselves?
Not for me.
An interesting piece - it didn't sit comfortably with me, mainly as it struck a bit of a raw nerve. I've always really enjoyed the festival and have been a massive advocate for it. I've seen some amazing world-class pieces over the years as well as discovered some amazing local grassroots talent on Festival Square, but I agree, I'm a little baffled (and underwhelmed) by the festival this year. I feel like I've been waiting for months for something more, especially given the exorbitant investment in the physical space, but it's not come. Like others, I'm really looking forward to seeing Yayoi, but feel that it's gained a disproportionately high amount of coverage and it feels as if Manchester is pinning all its hopes and dreams to this one exhibition! Perhaps my views will change when I get to Festival Square but I don't feel compelled to get down there tbh.
Good article and heartening to see you ended being hopeful about the venue. MIF has always put on shows that you would ‘struggle to think of anybody that would enjoy them’ but have managed to balance them alongside things you could take anybody to with no previous experience of the arts and they would love.
Given the article is titled ‘what is the venue actually for?’ There’s nothing in here about Factory Academy or the GM cultural skills consortium set up 2018, which has offered thousands of people free training and aims to develop future creative professionals. That was a big part of why the building was conceived, why it exists and what it’s trying to do. Worth revisiting…
I think MIF have done plenty to get their name and the broad sweep of work out there over the years. If people aren't looking at the adverts on billboards and streetlights, if they're not aware of Albert Square turning into a three ring circus for a month every other year, if they're not engaging with the city's cultural programming more broadly, I don't know that you can force them to. Personally, the opportunity to see highlights like the Massive Attack/Adam Curtis concert/film, or Tree of Codes, or Tao of Glass - or high-status failures like Baryshnikov lying on the floor screaming his way through The Old Woman or Into the Woods with Charlotte Rampling apparently never having read the script - is something that wasn't otherwise available.
Fwiw I think this sort of prestigious swinging for the fences is what the venue is 'for' - tricky stuff at scale, with cheap tickets. I don't think it's more deserving of funding than Oldham Coliseum, but I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I'm definitely more excited for the programming at Factory/whatever name we all settle on than I have been for much of the Legz Akimbo dross Home have put on over the last few years
200 million pounds would have funded regional theate in Manchester (including saving the Oldham Coliseum) and community arts projects for decades. Suggest stopping passers-by in New Moston, Wythenshawe, and Clayton and askling them if they are going.
I hope the large and highly paid team quickly get to work in shaping an exciting offer going forward. I found the MIF programme limited and dull - also no dance as far as I could see!
Brilliant article this with lots of food for thought. Insightful, relevant and honest. This is exactly why I love The Mill ! Thanks