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Front Row: Manchester International Festival

06/07/2021

Manchester International Festival

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Manchester International Festival

A look at this year’s Manchester International Festival.

With her new sound and light installation, Arcadia, Theatre and Opera director Deborah Warner has brought the feel of the field into The Factory – the new home for MIF.  The Factory is still very much a building site open to the elements, but for one weekend only the festival is providing an opportunity for visitors, to see the new construction from the inside.  And once inside the concrete shell, they will enter Arcadia, Deborah’s subversive and challenging artwork to Manchester’s spirit of progress. Deborah talks to Nick about the appeal of making an installation in an unfinished venue.

One of Pakistan’s most celebrated artists has used his MIF commission to explore his concept of Eart - his term to describe ways of thinking, being and acting creatively in real life.  Under the title, A Manifesto of Possibilities, Rana presents an exhibition which interrogates new ways of living, and he makes real one of his ideas with the creation of his version of the essential corner shop.  Nick Ahad pops in to the pop-up store to talk to producer Shanaz Gulzar about why ordering produce and stocking shelves is a new art frontier.

The death of her father last June prompted the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche to write a emotional essay, Notes On Grief, for the New Yorker.  The essay expanded into a book earlier this year, and now courtesy of MIF it has been adapted for the stage.  Nicky Byrne, Head of Clinical Services at Willow Wood Hospice and Nick Ahad attended the preview and discuss a play that meets a moment when many around the country are dealing with their own grief.

Hayley Finn, aka Skyliner, has been leading what has been described as “anti-tours” around Manchester for almost a decade.  Her urban tours not only seek  to reveal new things about the city to its inhabitants as well as its visitors, but to empower those on her tours with a sense that a city is a place created by those who live and work within it and that they too can and should contribute to the never-ending project that is improving the city. Nick meets Hayley to discuss one of the tours she’s leading for MIF, There Was A Bench Here Once.

Presenter: Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu

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