It’s almost midnight on June 28 2016, and I’ve just arrived back from a sublime Kamasi Washington gig at the Manchester Academy. Tomorrow it will be just one year to go before the 2017 Manchester International Festival.
Outside the window it’s a warm, if damp, summer night. On the TV, the prime minister, recently resigned, is talking from Europe. On social media there are more and more reports of attacks, across the UK, on those who look different. A bomb has just gone off in Istanbul Airport.
What a moment to be running an international festival: our work could hardly be more important than it is today. At the gig, Kamasi Washington and his young band played exhilarating contemporary jazz – John Coltrane channelling Sun Ra and P Funk, with a nod to today’s hip hop world. The music was an expression of internationalism – the influences of European and African sounds coming together to create something uniquely American. The stories, painful and joyous, behind that music, remind us of the many migrations that have made our world what it is.
Over the past six months, since starting full time at the Festival, I’ve been on my own international journey: from Karachi to Berlin, from Mumbai to Mexico City, from Abu Dhabi to Hong Kong. It’s been a huge privilege to meet extraordinary artists in each of these places, and to explore with them ideas for new work that could premiere here in Manchester. I am very much looking forward to introducing some of them to you next year.
Several of them have already travelled here to Manchester, or soon will, exploring our city – hearing stories, viewing spaces, meeting people, getting inspiration.
One of the developments of the Festival next year will be in the way we use the city. Many of the artists we are inviting are interested not only in our venues and hidden gems, but also in our public spaces– re-imagining how we live in and walk through the most day-to-day places. Expect to be taken on some very unexpected journeys!
Of course, we are working with some truly exciting names from the UK, Europe and the US too: making the classic MIF offer to each of these artists to do something they’ve never had the chance to do before. There will be work in the 2017 Festival that responds to the big questions we all face, but also work that brings us together for moments of joy, beauty and laughter – more important than ever in uncertain, untrusting times.
And we’ve been reaching out locally too. Next week we start work on a year-long programme with communities across the city, building an ever-wider involvement by Manchester’s creative citizens in the Festival. And we will also be inviting local artists to get involved in what we do in a range of new ways. Watch out for some thrilling collaborations!
Our unique international Festival of bold new work is an invitation to the world to come to Manchester – artists and audiences. Come for a few days and have the time of your life. Or come here to live and work – and bring your creativity and passion to this passionate, creative place! Manchester is growing through its cultural economy, and the Festival – in all its internationalism – is part of that.
Our Festival is also a moment to appreciate the internationalism around us every day – the rhythms from all five continents we hear in the voices and see in the movement of people walking through our city centre, the street fashion that references every corner of the globe, the digital innovation that joins our millions of folk to billions of others.
All these internationalisms will be part of our Festival in 2017. And at the heart of it all will be the most extraordinary art from the most extraordinary artists: passionate, beautiful, heart-wrenching, inviting, joyous, troubling, exhilarating, revelatory. The world at its best.
John McGrath
@johnMIF