…and I’ve not been able to update this site as much as I’d liked but we’ve been occupied with working on Creative Tourist’s Manchester Weekender, RNCM, Manchester Christmas Markets & Christmas Lights Switch-on, and Manchester Literature Festival.
AP photographer capturing the amazing Shrink performance at the launch of The Manchester Weekender
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The UK’s most innovative literature festival reveals that Orange Prize-winning author Lionel Shriver will launch its fifth edition on 14 October. The packed programme features celebrated writers such as Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen, as well as some specially commissioned new work including the inaugural Manchester Sermon to be delivered by Jeanette Winterson at Manchester Cathedral on 21 October. Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney will close the Festival on 25 October.
60 events with outstanding writers spread across 12 days, Manchester Literature Festival 2010 continues to develop its three main strands – READ INDEPENDENT FREEPLAY – as well as featuring new projects linking up with other arts organisations around the city. Since 2006 the Festival has staged a highly innovative series of events around the city in a variety of different locations including Manchester Cathedral, the gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall, Manchester Art Gallery and Chetham’s School of Music.
History, from the turbulent court of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II to the cloisters of a renaissance nunnery, is brought to life at this year’s festival with renowned historical novelists and historians Sarah Dunant and Alison Weir. Best-selling author and creator of the Sharpe novels, Bernard Cornwell will be making his only UK appearance to talk about his latest novel, The Fort set in the American War of Independence.
In her anniversary year, the work of Elizabeth Gaskell will be explored through a literary coach tour taking in the recently restored Gaskell House, where she penned many of her works as well as visiting The Gaskell Memorial Tower and finishing with afternoon tea in Knutsford, the inspiration for Cranford. BBC TV Producer Sue Birtwistle and scriptwriter Susie Conklin will also launch the Cranford Companion while this year the ever-popular BBC Writersroom features Cranford scriptwriter Heidi Thomas.
Award-winning TV writer and producer Paul Abbott and Patron of Manchester Literature Festival said this week, “I am delighted to be a patron of such a ground-breaking festival that brings writers of international repute to the city. Since the festival began, it has not only nurtured emerging local talent, but has also provided these new writers with a valuable showcase for their work, which is so important in today’s competitive market.”
Other patrons of Manchester Literature Festival confirmed this year are Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, broadcaster and anchor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Jenni Murray, broadcaster and journalist Miranda Sawyer, and highly-esteemed poet and publisher Michael Schmidt.
Other confirmed festival highlights are:
Carol Ann Duffy & John Sampson
17 October The Whitworth Art Gallery
Carol Ann Duffy together with the multi-talented musician John Sampson present a special family poetry event with music.
Amanda Craig & Michele Roberts
20 October, Waterstone’s
Two of the UK’s foremost women writers will be discussing their latest works. Amanda Craig’s Hearts and Minds is a thrilling and thoroughly contemporary tale about the invisible lives of immigrants. Michele Roberts short story collection Mud: Stories of Sex and Love, takes the reader to nineteenth century Venice, 1970s England, modern-day France and beyond, exploring women’s desires, memory, grief, love and betrayal.
Caryl Phillips
22 October, MMU
Novelist and Yale University professor Caryl Phillips will talk about his latest novel In the Falling Snow.
Women and Crime Fiction with Val McDermid & Sophie Hannah
22 October, Whitworth Art Gallery
Two of our most popular crime writers discuss gender roles in crime fiction, female protagonists (on either side of the law) and the ongoing debate about women as authors and originators of crime fiction.
Poetry continues to be an important component of the festival with performances from Fleur Adcock, Daljit Nagra, Pascale Petite, CK Williams and Desert Island Poems with Michael Schmidt & John McAuliffe at Chetham’s.
There will also be a healthy spread of literature in translation events, featuring leading writers from China, Spain, Norway, the Czech Republic and Morocco.
The hugely popular Manchester Blog Awards will take place once again in association with partners Manchester Digital Development Agency and Arts Council England. Details of how to enter will be available on the Manchester Literature Festival website.
Manchester Literature Festival also features a series of events especially for children and families including: Children’s Bookshow with Michael Rosen, a Moomin storytelling event with Tove Jannson’s niece Sophia Jansson, in association with NICE festival, and a puppetry and music show, Strange Stones, exploring the life of Mary Anning, the unsung heroine of 19th century palaeontology.
There are a number of trailblazer events for the Festival this year including Postcards from Manchester as part of The Manchester Weekender at venues across the city, 1 – 3 October 2010.
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Forty-eight hours of art, culture, music, film, food, festivals, literature, walks, politics, poetry, photography, theatre and spectacle all wrapped up into a single weekend.
The Manchester Weekender is a weekend-long snapshot of some of the best of Manchester’s art and culture. From 1-3 October 2010, The Manchester Weekender stages a series of one-off, intimate events that sum up the city, pairing international artists, musicians, festivals and writers with some of the city’s most beautiful settings. And it does this for one weekend only – forty-eight hours of some of the most unusual cultural experiences found anywhere within the UK.
Timed to mark the launch of Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and Recorders: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Manchester Art Gallery, The Manchester Weekender features the following highlights and with more to be announced:
AND Festival launch. After its smash-hit inaugural year in Liverpool last Autumn, this year’s Abandon Normal Devices comes to Manchester. A festival of new cinema and digital culture, it includes the UK premiere of Turner Prize winning artist Gillian Wearing’s first feature-length film, Self Made. New commissions from a clutch of internationally renowned artists, filmmakers and cultural provocateurs includes Phil Collins in a continuation of his critically acclaimed work Marxism Today. Vacuum packed and vertically suspended volunteers feature in artist Laurence Malstaff’s latest live performance while temporary outdoor cinemas pop up across the city. Midnight Mass from New York drag artist Peaches Christ will encourage bad cinema and even worse behaviour!
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Manchester Art Gall
ery. A major new exhibition of interactive digital artworks by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, including the world premiere of a large-scale installation People on People a co-commission with AND festival and at least four specially adapted interactive artworks that have never been shown publicly in England before, including the seminal Pulse Room, the artist’s contribution to the Mexican Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2007.
Manchester by water. A family boat party that connects the Manchester Ship Canal with the River Irwell; that puts food by one of the Northwest’s top chefs, Robert Owen Brown, on the menu; that links up one of Salford’s finest pubs, the Mark Addy, with two of Manchester finest museums (MOSI and the People’s History Museum); and that takes you from one city to its sister – Manchester to Salford – finishing up at one of the UK’s top ten architectural sights: Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North.
Krysko & Kashiwagi. A one-off gig, that’s part performance art and part club night, all taking place in the distinctly unusual setting of The Whitworth Art Gallery. DJ Matthew Krysko (The Warehouse Project/Sankeys/Tribal Gathering) and the award winning performance artist Naomi Kashiwagi use the Victorian gallery as the backdrop for a new collaborative work that combines electronic music with wind-up gramophones, and 70 year-old shellac records with the latest in digital DJ technology.
Guestrant. Out of the suburbs, one of Manchester’s best kept pub-and-dining secrets runs its famously fabulous Guestrant, in a secret location. Electrik is the bar in Chorlton run by Electric Chair/Electric Elephant DJ duo Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford. The concept sees a talented local chef visit the bar to cook a surprise three-course meal for one night only. Intimate, unusual and communal, each Guestrant is a chance to sample food by top name chefs and get-to-know-your-neighbours.
‘Close Up’ featuring Jonathan Franzen. The celebrated American novelist Jonathan Franzen heads to the Whitworth Art Gallery to read from his latest novel, Freedom, as part of an ‘in conversation’ event with DJ/writer Dave Haslam.
The Land Between Us. The Land Between Us brings historic and contemporary art together on equal terms to engage with today’s notions of landscape and identity. Works by artists including Nikhil Chopra, Olafur Eliasson, Cyprien Gaillard and Larissa Sansour and Rachel Whiteread, come together with others from The Whitworth Art Gallery’s extensive historic collection, from William Holman Hunt to Samuel Palmer and J.M.W. Turner. It will be the first time that the Whitworth has shown all 50 Turners in its collection at the same time.
Creative Manchester Map. A specially commissioned creative map of Manchester, designed by the artist-activist organisation Manchester Design Corporation with Laura Mansfield, the map plots project spaces, temporary, artist-led and mainstream galleries, contemporary arts organisations, artists’ studios, independent publications and curatorial groups – all those shadowy, often unknown agencies whose collective might provides much of Manchester’s creative capital. Walking tours all weekend take in not just art and culture but the cafes, bars and festivals that run simultaneously during the Weekender – the perfect way to enjoy the city’s hard-to-find and underground arts scene. The map coincides with the launch of Creative Tourist’s new iPhone app. – a guide to the art and culture of Manchester.
Urban wandering. From a sensory tour where families get to taste, hear, smell, see and touch Manchester to unusual creative activities ending in an urban picnic, and from psychogeography and parkour tour to the hidden museums collections and artefacts held in the city’s museums, galleries and archives. This series of tours explore Manchester with intelligence, wit, creativity and in some cases athletic prowess.
Postcards from Manchester. Don’t just visit Manchester – imagine it. As part of Manchester Literature Festival, the acclaimed and award winning poets Mandy Coe and John Siddique will be at Manchester Museum writing and helping visitors to write, poetry postcards, a unique way to capture the sights, sounds and smells of the city.
Hidden Manchester. A guided walk created and led by Manchester’s most popular guide, the broadcaster and historian Jonathan Schofield, especially for the Manchester Weekender. Schofield leads a very special, secret tour to one of the city’s most spectacular, but rarely seen by the public, buildings.
Beating Wing Orchestra at Imperial War Museum North. Best known for their sell-out performances at Manchester International Festival, Beating Wing Orchestra brings together artists from across Manchester’s musical spectrum, and from communities as diverse as Kurdistan and Cameroon, Bangladesh and Brazil, into joyful and life-affirming performances.
Black electronica. Contact Theatre hosts a three-day music, dance and arts festival that focuses on the influence of black music within the UK. Launching as part of the Manchester Weekender, Friday includes an evening of black electronica, while Saturday features a live dance link-up with New York.
Participating individuals, organisations and festivals. The AND Festival, Beating Wing Orchestra, Castlefield Gallery, Chinese Arts Centre, Clarion Cycling Club, Contact Theatre, Cornerhouse, CUBE, Dave Haslam, Electriks, Family Friendly Film Festival, Imperial War Museum North, John Rylands Library, Jonathan Schofield, The Lowry, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Comedy Festival, Manchester Design Corporation, Manchester Food & Drink Festival, Manchester Jazz Festival, Manchester Literature Festival, The Manchester Museum, Manchester Science Festival, The Mark Addy, MOSI, NICE Festival, The People’s History Museum, Robert Owen Brown, Studiomama, Un-convention, Whitworth Art Gallery, 24:7 Theatre Festival.
www.creativetourist.com/weekender
The Manchester Weekender is organised by Manchester Museums Consortium and Creative Tourist.
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