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Adam is a theatre performer and hip hop practitioner. Having trained in musical theatre, as well as in break dance; he focuses on the use of Hip Hop as a performance medium in theatre.
Under the North West Theatre Arts Company, Adam trained in performance and musical theatre for 14 years. And began his break dance journey 10 years ago, under the mentorship of Bboy Justroc (Floorgangz and Mighty Zulu Kings).
Over the last 10 years, Adam has worked as a professional performer across Europe, as well as competing up and down the UK at various break dance events.
Since 2018, Adam has taught classes through Break Dance Manchester. With the aim of inspiring the next generation of dancers, developing future Olympians and theatre makers.
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Alicia McKenzie is a Manchester based actor, musician and storyteller originally from Darlington. She has 20 years experience working in the arts and 9 years as a professional actor touring internationally and performing all over the UK with companies such as Northern Broadsides, The New Vic and Octagon, Bolton. Alicia has extensive experience conducting storytelling workshops in various settings. Her work seeks to bring to life the engaging stories of unheard voices in a theatrical and interactive way. Alicia has a Masters in Applied Theatre, specialising in performance for young audiences and she also worked as Youth Theatre assistant director at the Unicorn Theatre.
The idea for the project is to dive into British History and and seek out prominent figures from the black diaspora who made a significant contribution. There’ll be a heavy influence on the North of England. It’s aspects of British history, retold from the point of view of a northern black woman.
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www.amanicreatives.wordpress.com
Amani Creatives CIC is an African led arts and heritage organisation based in Manchester. Amani promotes and develops excellence in African arts and culture based in Manchester and the North West. They support the community through culture and raise awareness of African arts and culture across the UK and beyond.
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I am a British-Palestinian interdisciplinary artist who has been making work since 2005. My background and training are in performance, movement and skateboarding. I often work collaboratively with people in a range of disciplines. I am based in Manchester, UK. My work often explores the lived experience and politics of specific spaces and places. I am a co-founder of Accumulations - a Manchester-based collective and supportive network for the development of experimental movement, dance, and performance.
My recent work includes: ‘Bring Yourself to the Table’ (2020) - a durational movement score created and performed with artists Sara Spies and Christian Berger. This project was a meditation on who has the ability to participate in diplomatic solutions to conflict and was presented as part of the 2020 Festival of Belonging, Manchester Central Library. ‘The Slide’ (2018) - a short performance for camera about the politics of water in the West Bank. This project was commissioned as part of an event celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice. ‘Feint Lines’ (2018) - a skateboard choreography made in a Car Park. This project was commissioned for the Not Quite Light Festival in Salford as part of a strand of work examining women’s experiences of being alone in public spaces at night.
www.danielle-swindells.com / www.britseaton.com
Danielle Swindells and Brit Seaton are an artist duo based in Manchester.
Danielle Swindells (b.1994) is an artist and self-shooting documentary filmmaker who unpicks the complexity of the human condition by developing observations of isolated or overlooked communities and the landscape that contains them; specifically places maintained on memory or nostalgia. A Manchester School of Art graduate, her work has screened at London Institute of Contemporary Arts, Sheffield Doc/Fest, HOME and British Shorts Berlin. In 2017, she won the Deutsche Bank Award for Creative Enterprise (DBACE) for Film and in in 2021 her short documentary Stop Nineteen was acquired by the BFI National Archive for long-term preservation. Her latest work, Capturing A Summer was commissioned by Manchester International Festival as part of their Festival In My Neighbourhood (East Salford) 2020 programme.
Brit Seaton (b. 1996) is an arts producer and writer focusing on contemporary art and independent music, with a care for creative projects that engage and support community. Since 2018, she has worked closely with The Turnpike, Leigh to produce and coordinate projects rooted in social practice. She has also worked with the Barbican, Berlin Art Link, HVW8 Gallery, RVNG Intl and Vans x MoMA.
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A native Mancunian, Darren is a director, producer, choreographer, and vogue house mother. Darren has 20 years of experience in the fashion, theatre, television and performing arts industries. In addition to his leadership in the infamous House of Ghetto and pioneering efforts in Black Pride MCR, Darren is also the co-artistic director for the Manchester-based arts organisation Black Gold Arts.
www.erhmoss.wixsite.com/mysite
Manchester based interdisciplinary performance artist.
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Every Brain is an evolving project designed to support and platform neurodiverse creativity. Led by Ali Wilson, Every Brain works with neurodivergent artists &makers from across Greater Manchester to create new and exciting art works, build awareness and raise the profile of neurodivergent voices in the creative sector.
HMD is a Recording Artist and Producer & Educator from Manchester, Moss Side. Coming from a long line of poets and orators, HMD uses his Somali heritage to express his duality of life.
www.highlight-collective.com/yandass-ndlovu/impact
I M Pact Bio: LET’S GO- Contact, Manchester Opera House, HOME, Lowry, Portico Library, Antony Burgees Foundation, Royal Exchange Theatre;
All I want for Christmas- Royal Exchange Theatre
Queer Contact- Outspoken Festival
Nishla- Music Video
Yandass bio: Founder of I M Pact Collective. Current Manchester International Festival Creative Fellow. First Class BA Hons Dance and Performance at the Arden School of Theatre (2019).
Acting credits include: Jubilee (Lyric Hammersmith) , Macbeth; Our Town; Nothing; (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester). Birth: Orchid & Syria (World Health Organisation, Geneva); Negging (Bristol Old Vic); Dead Certain (Hopemill Theatre)
Dance credits include: Alphabus (Manchester International festival) FlexN Manchester (Old Granada Studios), Flexn Young Identity (Contact Theatre), Boy Blue Elevate (HOME THEATRE) Festival Number 6 (Portmeirion),In Extremis (Waterside Theatre)
Short Film and television credits include: Icaria (Nowness and MIF); LETS GO; Yandass.mov (Random Acts, Channel 4); The X Factor (ITV); Run Boy Run (Channel 4, Random Acts); Freestyle (BFI); All I Want For Christmas (Royal Exchange Theatre x I M Pact)
Directing & Choreographing Credits include:
Cryptomnesia (Future Ventures & ACE);[M]others (Co:lab- Royal Exchange Theatre); See Me After-PUSH (HOME theatre); Fortitude (Short Film); Yandass.mov & Run Boy Run (Channel 4, Random Acts); Through The Eye- Rachel Chinouriri
Assisting credits include: Breathe 2 (Manchester International Festival), Space Between Us (Royal Exchange Theatre)
Follow: Instagram (Yandass), Instagram (I M Pact)
www.nickjordan.info/wurstundgritz.html
Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan are visual artists based in Manchester. Working together since 2003, their collaborative practice is cross-disciplinary, encompassing video, drawing, painting, photography, objects, publications and events. Their work explores the inter-connections between the natural world and multifaceted cultural histories, and has been exhibited internationally, including recently at: Innsbruck International Biennale (Austria); ICA (London); Kunstmuseum (Bonn); Academia de Cine (Madrid); Musée du Quai Branly (Paris); Whitstable Biennale (UK); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin); Darwin State Museum, (Moscow); National Maritime Museum (London); Documenta (Madrid). Film festivals include Clermont-Ferrand (France); São Paulo (Brazil); FIDMarseille (France); Winterthur (Switzerland); Kassel Dokfest (Germany); Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK); lndieLisboa (Portugal); BFI London Film Festival (UK). Residences and commissions include: Headlands Center for the Arts (USA); The National Trust; Arts & Heritage; Forma; Book Works; ICA; The University of Manchester; Art Gene; The Swedenborg Society; Cornerhouse; Manchester Museum; Chrysalis Arts.
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Kate Feld is a writer, photographer and performer who grew up in in the U.S. state of Vermont and now lives in Ramsbottom. She writes poetry, short fiction, essays and prose that sits between forms. Her writing explores the natural world, mythology and the unconscious, and has been published widely in journals and anthologies including The Stinging Fly, The Letters Page, Hotel, and, most recently, in The Art of Being Dangerous: Exploring Women and Danger Through Creative Expression (Leuven University Press.) She is the founding editor of UK creative nonfiction journal and reading series The Real Story, and lectures in journalism at the University of Salford.
Michael is an internationally recognised Double Bassist, Composer, and Musical Director.
In 2014 Michael became the Musical Director of Manchester International Roots Orchestra, founded to bring together musicians from all musical heritages. MIRO creates unique music which blends, explores, and juxtaposes music from across the globe. Many of MIRO’s musicians are from refugee and migrant backgrounds
As an in-demand international jazz and classical Double Bassist, Michael is driven by the desire to push forward the instrument’s repertoire and potential, often performing his own compositions and those linked to his Romanian heritage. As a composer he has been commissioned by the Bucharest Conservatoire, Royal Exchange Theatre and Romanian Cultural Institute in London.
In 2019 he composed a Classical Contemporary piece “Journey of Friendship”. Bringing together MIRO musicians and RNCM students, it fused together Western Classical Music with music from Pakistan to the Balkans to Kurdistan.
Full performance here: https://youtu.be/Q71fk_gREm4.
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mandla rae is a Black, zimbabwean, agender & queer writer and performer. obsessed with archives and storytelling, they make work that draws from their personal experiences and heritage, to prove that they exist and create connections with their audiences. mandla has performed their work at Contact, the Royal Exchange, HOME and Leeds Playhouse. they are also an Associate Artist with Outbox Theatre.
Museum of Half Truths is a research project established in 2020 by Polly Palmerini and Rachael Burns. The project questions how we as communities can actively shape and rebuild our cultural spaces. Our shared interest is in creating spaces for arts and learning that are equitable, accessible and relevant, but also fun and playful.
Our first installment of Museum of Half Truths was in Hong Kong collaborating with local artists, writers and curators. We used a programme of events to develop collaborative practices and reflections all looking at institutional 'half truths' and interrogating our own curatorial bias.
new func is a space of play and experimentation. We question how we live and how to be alive.
new func is comprised of 3 elements:
1. Book Club: through new ways of communal reading we embody language and ideas, asking questions of our actions to develop our understanding together.
2. New Ways: a space of experimentation where creatives propose new ways of meeting needs which make us feel alive. We breathe, drink, eat, sleep, walk, meet, greet, trade and tidy up… in ways which plunge us into the wonderment of uncertainty, where we can truly connect and be.
3. Party: losing ourselves in music and dance, and finding new ways to reach ecstasy.
I am a writer and director who is passionate about working with people from different walks of life, helping them to share their stories by providing them with a platform to be heard. I have facilitated and produced a range of creative projects from live theatre, film and animation with a range of diverse young people from all different types of backgrounds and delivered in a variety of settings including theatres, schools, colleges and community groups.
I am proud to have launched 'Blurred Lines' in 2019, a critically acclaimed short film tackling child criminal exploitation and the dangers of modern slavery, as part of Greater Manchester's week of action on exploitation which is being used to educate young people.
In early 2020 I shot 'Changing The Narrative' funded by Leverhulme Trust to uncover what it means to be female and British Muslim. The documentary explores what that experience is like under the current political landscape.
I made a film part of GMCA creative commissions response to COVID 19 'My Week in Lockdown' .
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www.richardshieldsartworks.org
Richard Shields is a practicing Artist, Curator and Writer based in the North West. His work offers a contextualized view of contemporary culture and values through the combination of traditional skills, relational aesthetics and re appropriation. Having co-founded the artist led initiative ‘Contents May Vary’ in 2004, Shields went on to curate a series of site responsive exhibitions throughout the UK, exploring and broadening the scope for an alternative to the gallery system for young artists. The method of responding to alternative sites was applied it to his studio practice, using personal experiences from student debt, unemployment, gallery jobs and cataract procedures as inspiration. In 2012 Shields concluded a project in which he sold his own credit card debt as an artwork. His explorations into the related histories of Art and Banking have led to an ongoing practice based research project. This activity included a site-specific commission for the Mdina Cathedral Biennale and a practice based workshop at Cittadelle Arte in Biella, Italy. After completing a residency in Bill Drummunds Curfew Tower, curated by Penthouse NQ Shields explored his Northern Irish identity through a mythical paramilitary art organisation, suggesting parallels with the contemporary art world. Shields is currently using early Italian Theatre as a vehicle for presenting new work furthering his exploration into identity and contemporary living, from the pressures of freelance culture, mental health and social media.
Mandy Redvers Rowe has written for Radio, Theatre and TV. Recent credits include Second Sight - Jimmy McGovern's Moving on for BBC1 and Shielded for The Everyman. Justine Potter has developed produced and directed TV, Radio and Theatre. Recent credits include Anthony by Jimmy McGovern for BBC1, Clink 10 part prison drama for Channel 5 and What Would You Do stage adaptation by Melissa Johns and Sarah Nelson for BBC
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Sophie Lee is a British artist living in Manchester. Often working in a site-responsive way, predominately with video, photography and writing. She is interested in exploring themes around care, loss, identity and our connection to place.
In 2018 Lee received ACE funding for the project Always Something Moves. A work about her father’s dementia and their shifting relationship. The artist worked collaboratively on a choral arrangement with SHE Choir Manchester which was performed at the Manchester Central Library in 2020. Also, the project delivered a new body of text and video works presented in a solo exhibition at Bankley studio and gallery the same year.
Lee’s work has been exhibited in the UK and Europe, including her solo exhibition Any Structured Pattern at Progr, Bern, Switzerland (2014), group shows with OutsiderXchanges; BALTIC, Gateshead (2016) The Manchester Contemporary (2016), Loose Space, Vienna, Austria (2015) and at SIM House Reykjavik (2015). Lee has undertaken artist residencies in Finland, Iceland and the UK.
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The Untold Orchestra is a Manchester-based collaborative orchestra aiming to redefine the orchestral role in the 21st century. Founded on the belief that all art forms can be accessible to anyone: we collaborate with an array of musicians, artists, venues, and communities to reach new people in every project–focused on creating positive change through art.
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www.creativedebuts.co.uk/tina-ramos-ekongo
Tina Ramos Ekongo is a Spanish -Equatorial Guinean figurative visual artist and illustrator who lives and works in England. She was born in 1987 in Malabo Equatorial Guinea and grew up in Spain between Madrid and Zaragoza and moved to the UK in 2011. Regarding her work, it is mainly portraiture and is very influenced by the African traditional murals on health campaigns and the artwork found in African barbershops and hair salons. Her style and technique is also influenced by the great artist Cheri Samba from whom she has admiration and respect, while the content and the history behind her work is inspired by the work of the surrealist Mexican artist Frida Khalo which feminist approach has had a great effect on her work. The use of cardboard as the principal medium to develop her work serves as a juxtaposition on the undervalue of black women in Western societies and their real value as pillars of their communities and force of change. Through painting them on cardboard, she gives a new value to a disposable material and highlights the exquisite beauty of the black woman in her different shades. In the opinion of the artist, the British artistic world lacks sufficient representation regarding black artists and creators and it's time to change the narrative, black artists need to be seen, listened to and felt.
Vicky Clarke is a sound and electronic media artist from Manchester, UK. Working with sound sculpture, DIY electronics and human-machine systems, she explores our relationship to technology through sonic materiality, live AV and browser-based artwork. Vicky won the Oram Award 2020 for innovation in sound and music technology and is working towards her first album release. She is currently artist in residence at NOVARS research centre, University of Manchester exploring musique concrete and machine learning in collaboration with PRiSM at Royal Northern College of Music. The residency builds on her AI research trip to St Petersburg/Moscow as a selected artist for UK-RUSSIA Year of Music with British Council and her project 'MATERIALITY' exploring sound sculpture as a gestural and acoustic medium to interface the physical and digital. On this project she collaborated with the National Graphene Institute to develop a conductive graphene performance interface for Ableton.
Her work has featured on 'SONIC FUTURES: How technology is guiding electronic music', British Council and 'Artist DIY' for FACT magazine. She is co- director of Noise Orchestra, a DIY electronics project building Noise Machines that translate light into sound, and has performed/exhibited with National Science & Media Museum, MUTEK, CTM and FutureMusic3 at RNCM. Vicky is an AMPLIFY DAI artist an artistic programme promoting and connecting the work of women identifying artists in UK, Argentina and Canada supported by British Council, MUTEK and Somerset House Studios. She is passionate about DIY music cultures, demystifying tech and promoting women in sound and electronic music, working as a music educator for Brighter Sound and as a Creative Associate for FutureEverything.
Voices Beyond is a Manchester-based gospel collective, made up of singers and musicians who write original gospel songs and perform across the UK.The collective has been together since March 2013 and is passionate about creating and performing uplifting and inspirational music, with a mission to touch and encourage everybody who listens.
In 2015 they released their first EP and since then have gone on to release a number of Christmas singles/covers. Over the last few years they have been working on their 2nd originals project and and hoping to release this very soon.
They bring a fresh and modern approach to gospel music by offering an appealing and authentic sound whilst remaining original and unique.
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