HOME, Manchester’s international centre for contemporary visual art, theatre and film, will mark its first birthday with a celebratory weekend from Fri 20 to Sun 22 May 2016.
Since opening its doors in May last year with an exceptionally successful HOMEwarming weekend attracting 28,000 visitors, the organisation has now welcomed over 1 million visits, presenting exciting new theatre productions, exhibitions, film seasons, commissions and artistic collaborations with outstanding companies, artists, writers, directors and producers from the North West, the UK and across the world.
HOME’s celebratory weekend will mark its first anniversary with activity across art, theatre and film, presenting installation, performance, theatre productions, film previews, live musical performances, workshops and family-friendly events.
From Friday night till Sunday night come and celebrate our first spectacular year together with roving musicians on the outside square, a chilled out ‘Rooftop Festival’, a chance to play your own vinyl, and the chance to contribute to a very special birthday work of art.
Enjoy DJ sets from Greg Thorpe, Mof Gimmers, Andrea Trout, Tim Irving and Manchester’s salsa superstar DJ, Vlad NRG, plus live music from resident artist Najia Bagi, busking star turned recording artist Jon Kenzie, and the Manchester String Quartet, mixing classical with Manchester classics.
The square outside will be buzzing with the vintage charms of the Gypsies of Bohemia and HOME favourites, Dr Butler’s Hatstand Medicine Band, while upstairs Inna Voice and Young Identity will be shouting their words from the rooftops.
Over the course of the weekend we’re inviting everyone who visits HOME to contribute to an exciting collaborative sculpture by artist Nicola Dale. It’s our ‘paper’ anniversary so over the weekend, Nicola will supervise the construction of a huge paper sculpture that will travel from the top floor of the building all the way to the bottom. Come and contribute, take a snap and watch a unique birthday paper chain grow before your eyes.
For Sunday nighters it will be be hosting a taxing and titillating pub quiz, followed by ‘Jason’s Vinyl Jukebox’, where our own Artistic Director of Film, Jason Wood will be running a ‘vinyl jukebox’ where you bring that precious 7 and have it spun in the bar just for you!
Highlights
Major new art exhibition Imitation of Life, a group show exploring racial politics in an evolving world, with oral histories and verbatim storytelling drawn from theatre and cinema, painting and sculpture which all confront the fluid, changing politics of representation and race. With new work from critically acclaimed artist Sophia Al-Maria
· The book launch of Fear Eats The Soul, accompanying Imitation of Life, a collection of new poetry fiction and essays by contributors including Sophia Al-Maria, Zach Blas, Zachary Cahill, Pamella Dlungwana, Jackie Kay MBE, Omar Kholeif, Monica B Pearl, Sarah Perks, Jacolby Satterwhite and Martine Syms
· Live performance by celebrated artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy with a spoken-word lecture, remixing sound and lyrics to research the post-colonial and its relationship to today’s globalised media and technologies
· What Would Billie Do?, new work for HOME Projects by musician and artist Najia Bagi, who uses raw, brutally honest love songs as inspiration extending beyond gallery walls in the first of a series of project-led commissions. Exploring questions related to love and relationships, Bagi will stage a series of performances, installations and interventions
· A double bill of theatre with Gutted by The Conker Group, created by Liz Richardson and Tara Robinson, bringing to life a shameless tale of love, laughter and lavatories based on Richardson’s real life experience of living with Ulcerative Colitis; and Late Night Love, presented by Manchester-based Eggs Collective, inspired by the confessional radio show of the same name and an unflinching attempt to unpick the truth from the fiction of chocolate boxes and untangle expectations of adulthood from the promise of power ballads (created in collaboration with Olivier award-winning director Mark Whitelaw)
· A Saturday Rooftop Festival featuring music, entertainment and great food, plus a specially curated programme of live music performance, DJ appearances and party atmosphere by renowned events promoter Greg Thorpe, the mind behind the incredibly successful line-up for the HOMEwarming weekend
· Artist Nicola Dale invites you to help her to create a sculpture for HOME that will cascade down the feature staircase at the heart of the building. Join her on Saturday 21 May for a free sculpture workshop to learn about the techniques she’ll use.
· Queer as Yolk: Redux, celebrating Richard DeDomenici’s popular Redux Project, attempting to make shot-for-shot remakes of scenes from famous film and TV on a shoestring budget with amateur local crews, in the same locations where the originals were filmed. DeDomenici has now applied his unique set of skills to the ground-breaking Mancunian classic Queer As Folk, in collaboration with performance trio Eggs Collective
· The preview of Studio Ghibli’s When Marnie Was There (2015), the final release from the legendary Japanese animation house before its hiatus, by the director of critically acclaimed Arrietty, Hiromasa Yonebayashi. A suitably nostalgic and overwhelmingly moving story, as well as another superb artistic achievement, with all the gentle, highly imaginative, narrative complexity and visual grace that’s made the studio’s reputation.
· A series of fantastic family events with a screening of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), theatre production At the End of Everything Else, full of puppetry, animation and music, a puppet workshop by Joseph Richardson (puppeteer of the Goose on the War Horse UK Tour), a dance workshop led by acclaimed hip hop dance outfit ZooNation The Butterfly’s Adventure, a thrilling adventure behind the scenes at HOME, presented by Scally Wags Theatre Company.
