Returning to brighten our days during these unprecedented times, Manchester International Festival will be relaunching MIF Live. Showcasing free livestreams, discussions and archive broadcasts, MIF Live will celebrate the festival that we love without leaving our homes.

Each week’s schedule on the MIF website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and will include full and free streams of events from previous festivals, talks and discussions from key friends across arts in Manchester and beyond, and MIF Originals podcast.

On top of this, MIF are launching an open call for artist commissions and residencies, aiming to provide valuable income and support to a community that’s been hit especially hard by the pandemic.

Here's what's coming up and recent performances:

Friday 22nd May

A reimagining of MIF17’s hit Party Skills for the End of the World, from award-winning theatrical innovators Nigel Barrett and Louise Mari of cult performance collective Shunt, will be presented on Friday 22 May, 7.30pm. Originally staged in a unique Salford building, 2017’s Party Skills… was a wild, immersive show that showed us how to get by when the end comes and how to celebrate everything that makes life worth living. Now, exclusively for MIF LIVE, Louise and Nigel have created Party Skills for the End of the World (Lockdown Edition), an entirely new immersive online party experience where audiences can meet, mingle – and learn a few new skills to help them through their locked-down lives.

Friday 15th May

On Friday the 15th MIF Live will see a rescheduled streaming of FKA twigs’ Soundtrack 7, created and filmed during the artist’s MIF15 residency at the Old Granada Studios. Conceptualised as an abstract autobiographical piece, Soundtrack 7 includes performances set to How’s That, Ultraviolet, and Good to Love among other tracks by the artist, and is bound together by a striking, repeated recitation of Thomas Wyatt’s poem I Find No Peace (an excerpt from which opened twigs’s critically acclaimed LP1). Emphasising the grit and physicality of dance, FKA twigs describes the project as ‘flesh, sweat, feeling, muscle, and a live movement, no air brushing, no frills’. The film will be followed by an exclusive in-conversation between FKA twigs and Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Friday 8th May

The musician, storyteller, actor and activist, Riz Ahmed, will join MIF Live for Riz Ahmed in Conversation on Friday 8 May at 7.30pm to discuss his life and work, including his latest project The Long Goodbye. Unfolding over the course of a recently released album and short film, and a forthcoming new live show (commissioned and produced by MIF and BAM) which was due to premiere in Manchester last month, The Long Goodbye turns our divided political times into deeply personal matter through the metaphor of a romantic break-up. Riz will be talking about his work and life in the company of Ciaran Thapar, youth worker and author of the forthcoming Cut Short: Youth, Violence and Loss in the City, and MIF Artistic Director John McGrath. Complementing the discussion, on Saturday morning, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, choreographer on The Long Goodbye live show, will give a free online dance class inspired by the show.

Friday 1st May

MIF LIVE continues this week with Re:Creating Europe, an exploration of Europe through the words that have defined its history, directed by prolific theatre director Ivo van Hove. It will be streamed on MIF’s YouTube channel on Friday 1 May, 7.30pm, introduced with a piece specially recorded for this online presentation, written and read by Michael Morpurgo.

Re: Creating Europe weaves together a multi-layered tapestry of words from artists, thinkers and political leaders – from Shakespeare to Goethe, Churchill to Obama – to explore the essence of Europe, and inviting audiences to consider its  past, present and future. This thought-provoking production was originally presented at the Festival in July 2019, with a cast that included Adjoa Andoh, Christopher Eccleston, Lemn Sissay, Juliet Stevenson and Michael Morpurgo, appearing alongside van Hove’s Internationaal Theater Amsterdam on stage at The Lowry in Salford.

Friday 17th April

New Order + Liam Gillick: So it goes.. is the first show announced for MIF LIVE, Manchester International Festival’s new free online programme for audiences at home during the lockdown. The exclusive new edit will be streamed at 7.30pm on Friday 17 April, kickstarting the weekly release of archive shows, talks, behind-the-scenes insights and a new series of Festival in My House.

Originally presented as part of MIF17, New Order + Liam Gillick: So it goes. . saw the legendary Manchester band take over the city’s iconic Old Granada Studios, where Joy Division made their 1978 television debut on Tony Wilson’s So It Goes programme, for a very special series of intimate performances created in collaboration with visual artist Liam Gillick.