About Us

Manchester International Festival is the world’s first festival of original, new work and special events, and takes place biennially in Manchester, UK. The Festival launched in 2007 as an artist-led, commissioning festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, visual arts and popular culture. Highlights from the past three festivals – 2007, 2009 and 2011 have included group shows Il Tempo del Postino and 11 Rooms, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Monkey: Journey to the West, Punchdrunk’s immersive Dr Who experience The Crash of The Elysium, Music Boxes, a wonderful commission for children aged 6 months-7 years, Victoria Wood’s That Day We Sang and the premieres of special gigs from Bjork to Snoop Dogg and Sinead O’Connor. The festival also encompasses MIF Creative, the community and learning focused arm of the festival, bringing MIF to the people and communities of Manchester and learning from them in its turn.

Booking opens for the next Festival (4-21 July 2013) in March 2013. More details will be posted on this site at a later date.

Manchester International Festival is the world’s first festival of original, new work. The Festival programme features a wide range of work all specially created for the Festival, including music, visual arts, theatre, dance, food and family events, some indoor and some outdoor, all presented by internationally acclaimed artists and co-producers. The work is premiered in Manchester, with many commissions going on to tour the world.

• The 2013 Festival dates are 4 – 21 July 2013

• The 2011 Festival ran from 30 June – 17 July 2011

• The 2009 Festival ran from 2 – 19 July

• The 2007 Festival ran from 28 June – 15 July

Manchester International Festival celebrates the city’s pivotal role in music, culture, innovation and the arts, building on the legacy of the hugely successful Commonwealth Games held in Manchester in 2002.

The Festival has now become a major cultural event in the international calendar: an artist-led festival that enables leading international artists to create new work, encouraging local, national and international visitors to Manchester, and providing opportunities for local communities to participate, volunteer and see world-class artists in their city.

All of the work presented by the Festival is original, new work, commissioned and produced by the Festival and its partners. The two-year cycle of the Festival allows time to identify and build relationships with leading international artists and to produce the work itself.

During the in-between years many of the shows made for the Festival tour to partner venues and festivals, taking work made in Manchester out to an international audience. A core team works year round on the Festival and on the touring programme.

During the years between the Festivals (2008, 2010, 2012 etc) many of the works made for the Festival tour internationally.

From the 2011 Festival, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic will tour to Madrid, Basel, Antwerp and Amsterdam; Dr Dee will be at the ENO’s home, the Coliseum in London in June 2012 and The Crash of The Elysium goes to Ipswich also in June. Both are part of the London 2012 Festival.

From the 2009 Festival, Carlos Acosta, Prima Donna, JS Bach / Zaha Hadid Architects, Oily Cart’s Something in the Air, The Difference Engine, Durutti Column’s Paean to Wilson and Young@Heart in End of the Road have all appeared in other cities.

Monkey: Journey to the West from the ‘07 Festival appeared at Theatre du Chatelet, Paris, Spoleto Festival, USA, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and a specially built venue at London’s O2.

For information on tour dates and news on MIF shows in other venues, go to MIF TOURING in the programme section of this website.

There were three trailblazers prior to the inaugural Festival in 2007.

The first was Gorillaz: Demon Days Live at Manchester Opera House in November 2005, the second was The Schools Festival Song, a new piece by Ennio Morricone and Nicholas Royle sung by an 8,000-strong school’s choir, December 2006. The third and final pre-festival commission was Queen and Country by Turner prize-winning artist Steve McQueen. Installed at Manchester Central Library in February 2007, the piece was made up of stamps featuring the image of British Service personnel killed in the Iraq war.

In 2008 the Festival welcomed Leonard Cohen to Manchester for his first UK shows in more than 15 years.

Festival events take place across Manchester and Salford in a range of established venues including the Palace Theatre, The Bridgewater Hall, the Opera House, The Lowry, Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Some of the Festival’s free events take place in public spaces, such as Manchester Peace Gardens, MediaCityUK, the Town Hall and Deansgate. Non-traditional venues have also been used, including Manchester Velodrome, an office building in Spinningfields and the Festival’s specially built Pavilion in Albert Square.

The 2011 and 2009 Festival featured 20 world premieres and special events across the city. Both editions featured the Festival’s temporary, pop-up venue, the Pavilion Theatre in Albert Square. The 2007 Festival featured 25 premieres.

Many of the world premiere events run for several performances across the Festival, giving audiences more opportunities to experience them.

A number of the events will have a life beyond the Festival, both in Manchester and around the world.

During the inaugural Festival in 2007 more than 200,000 people attended events or participated in community projects, educational workshops and free events. Around 230,000 people attended the 2009 and 2011 Festivals respectively.

The Festival is a limited company and registered charity with funding from the public and private sectors and income from ticket sales, plus money from local, national and international co-commissioning partners.

There are many opportunities for the public to get involved in the Festival. The MIF volunteer scheme welcomed 383 local people to work in all areas of the 2011 Festival. MIF Creative, the Festival’s creative learning programme, worked with over 4,000 local people and included four major commissions created in collaboration with local communities, schools or groups. All three editions of the Festival also featured local involvement in creative skills development workshops and arts education workshops with international and local artists.

MIF is committed to developing a festival which benefits the local economy, is engaging for local communities and which tries to minimize its environmental impact.

These principles guide all of our sustainable development activities, from ensuring our offices are welcoming and resource efficient; to sourcing and creating our productions responsibly and working with partner venues and suppliers to reduce the environmental impact of MIF events.

Some of our sustainable actions during MIF 2011 included:

• Keeping approximately 1/3 of the Festival’s Programme free – including the family friendly interactive Music Boxes at MediaCityUK and John Gerrard’s Infinite Freedom Exercise just off Albert Square

• Continuing with our compostable cutlery and tableware at Festival Square and expanding our recycling facilities which concluded with us saving 79% of our waste from landfill. With over 90,000 visitors across the 18 days – that’s a lot of waste…

• Working with Manchester City Council to supply Festival Square with electricity negating the use of external generators; this not only benefited MIF but will continue to benefit all other temporary activities held in Albert Square in the future

• Re-using, hiring, or recycling all of our Production sets

• Introducing three Festival bikes for staff to get round the City

• Turning our Festival banners into bags – stylish, practical and ‘green’

If you would like more information or to suggest ideas on how we could improve sustainability at the next Festival, we would love to hear from you: sustainability@mif.co.uk

Alex Poots Festival Director
Simon Mellor General Director
Christine Cort Associate Director
Jackie McNerney Administrative Director

Tracy Longdin PA to Festival and General Director
Gemma Saunders Assistant to Associate Director

Christine Gettins Senior Producer
Tracey Low Senior Producer
Kate Mackonochie Producer
Katie Vine Touring Manager
Rachel Down Touring Assistant

Jack Thompson Technical Director
Sarah Rowland Head of Artist Liaison

David Fox Administration Manager
Stephanie Clark London Office Administrator

Jennifer Cleary Director of Creative Learning
Sarah Hiscock MIF Creative Co-ordinator

Rachel Green Head of Sponsorship

Nadja Coyne Press and PR Director

Cathy Gallagher Marketing Director*
Mandy Martinez Acting Marketing Manager

*Consultant

Festival Board
Tom Bloxham MBE
Cllr Mike Amesbury
Chris Oglesby
Joyce Hytner OBE
Sir Brian McMaster CBE
Richard Paver
Peter Salmon
Andrew Stokes
Kully Thiarai
Jeremy Deller
Steve Downes
Nancy Rothwell

Fran Toms (Board Observer)
Anna Hassan (Board Observer)

Artistic Advisors
Michael Morris
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Peter Saville