Partners

About MIF & The Factory Manchester International Festival (MIF) is UK based artist-focused festival of original, new work and special events reflecting the spectrum of performing arts, visual arts and popular culture, staged every two in venues across Greater Manchester – from theatres, galleries and concert halls to railway depots, churches and car parks. MIF works closely with venues, festivals and other cultural organisations globally, whose financial and creative input helps to make many of these projects possible and ensures that work made at MIF goes on to be seen around the world. MIF also supports a year-round Creative Engagement programme, bringing opportunities for people from all backgrounds, ages and from all corners of the city to get involved during the Festival and year-round, as volunteers, as participants in shows, through skills development and a host of creative activities.

MIF will also run The Factory, the landmark new cultural space currently being built in Manchester, UK, designed by the internationally renowned Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and backed by Manchester City Council and HM Government. The Factory will commission, present and produce an ambitious and adventurous year-round creative programme, featuring bold new work from the world’s greatest artists and offering a space to create, invent and experiment. At 13,300 square metres, The Factory will be ultra-flexible, enabling large-scale artistic work of invention and ambition that isn’t made anywhere else in the world: from large-scale multimedia performances to epic installations, to intimate performances and ground-breaking digital experiences.

Attracting up to 850,000 visitors annually, The Factory will add £1.1 billion to the UK economy over a decade and create up to 1,500 direct and indirect jobs. Its pioneering programme of skills, training and engagement will benefit local people and the next generation of creative talent from across the city, whilst apprenticeships and trainee schemes are already underway during the construction phase. Located in the St John’s neighbourhood next to the River Irwell, The Factory will be at the heart of a burgeoning city centre hub for culture, creativity and digital innovation.

Founded by William Kentridge, the Centre for the Less Good Idea aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects.

The Centre is a physical and immaterial space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of producing work. Often, when you start with a good idea, It might seem crystal clear at first, but when you take it off the proverbial drawing board, cracks and fissures emerge in its surface, and they cannot be ignored. It is in following the secondary ideas, those less good ideas coined to address the first idea’s cracks, that the Centre nurtures, arguing that in the act of playing with an idea, you can recognise those things you didn’t know in advance but knew somewhere inside of you.

The Centre is a space to follow impulses, connections and revelations. It’s a physical space for artists to come together over two seasons every year and for curators to bring together combinations of text, performance, image and dance. The Centre believes an ensemble sees the world differently to how one individual does. It is a safe space for failure, for projects to be tried and discarded because they do not work. It’s a space for short form work which doesn’t have a natural home in a theatre or gallery. The Centre for the Less Good Idea is the venue partner for the So Creative Summit .

A vibrant and dynamic arts and culture institution, the SA State Theatre integrates social and cultural diversity while maintaining a healthy balance between artistic creativity and fiscal stability. An environmentally friendly and modern theatre complex that provides for the preservation of our heritage and promotion of the arts, it’s an entertainment destination of choice for inspiration. Focused on education and socio-economic transformation, which is underpinned by our unique, engaging and diverse artistic offering, we encourage audience growth and an appreciation for the performing arts.

The State Theatre’s strong collaborations and partnerships with the performing arts sector drive economic development by creating performing arts works that are commercially viable. An institution that embraces information and communication technology to enable strategic direction and the achievement of organisational goals, the State Theatre is the recording partner for the So Creative Summit.