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Who we are and what we do
MIA was founded in 1988 to present international, multi-cultural and animatory events in Greater Manchester and the North West.
Our last 12 years have been devoted mostly to
- organising large vibrant festivals in the centres of towns, involving street performers, visual installations, circus, music, pageantry and fireworks.
- creating The garden of delights, a weekend 'pleasure garden' in a Manchester park
- producing installations that last for several days in one place that transform that site and offer countless opportunities for public engagement and interaction.
In all of our work, we have brought many of the most wonderful, engaging, imaginative and colourful companies from Britain and abroad, often for the first time, to Greater Manchester and the region.
Our festival work has an all-important goal - to create an exciting, energising atmosphere in a town or city centre that maximises its existing potential - shops, cafes, restaurants, open spaces and squares - by the addition of carefully chosen special events.
And our Garden of Delights mixes energetic and gentle activity, using the very different spaces - lake, woodland, hills, grassy banks, glades - to their best effect, to create unusual, enjoyable and memorising experiences for many people. We call this cultural animation.
We choose to use the arts as our starting point (though it is obviously possible to use sporting activities, markets and other types of event) as we think that the interaction between performers and audience and, as importantly, between the audience and each other, is best guaranteed this way. And it is this interaction that sparks the ‘animation’.
To work in this way means we have to have a high level of understanding about the geography of a place, how and when people use its streets, squares, parks and shopping areas, and what kind of programme could work well there. For this reason, we rarely work outside of the North West of England. It would be costly and time consuming to do sensitive and appropriate research into the above factors, a cost that we would far rather see spent on artists! We always recommend local event organisers to anyone asking us for advice and we are happy to consider a training or consultative role if no-one local can be identified.
Over the past 15 years we have organised numerous events ranging in scale from month-long international festivals to an evening in a community centre. In some cases we are the direct promoter of the event, in others we are commissioned to produce them, by or in collaboration with other organisations.
The founders and joint artistic directors of MIA are Anne Tucker and Jeremy Shine, who have both worked for many years in a variety of different areas of the arts, in London and Greater Manchester. Additionally, we use a team of freelancers with experience in artistic planning, production and event management, all based in or close to Manchester.
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