Its been an honour and privilege being a member of The Factory Assembly for the past two years, working with so many wonderful people to create The Welcome at Aviva studio. The whole program was spectacular in not only embodying and representing the spirit of community, diversity and joy which we as a group felt was the essential part of what the welcome needed to be but also in engendering that spirit in Aviva studio and letting all the people of Manchester know that this building is theirs…this space is ours!.

Looking back now it is difficult to put into words just what a massive amount of work this has taken over a long period of time. We started work on this back in lockdown and have met, first online, and then in person to develop and shape an event which we felt would engage all sections of Manchester (no mean feat!) and allow people to experience this building in a different and unique way.

The end result was something more special than we could have imagined and succeeded in all of our aims. I was genuinely overwhelmed by the number of visitors who came and enjoyed Aviva for the first time or were given places to make their own. Highlights for me (and this is a drastically pared down list) were:
Inside Out This is Manchester– seeing the faces of so many people who make up this city and region represented in such a beautiful way and being able to see those people share this with friends and family (myself included) was magical.
Street Culture Takeover: A fantastic opportunity to really open up the space to a younger crowd and represent the vibrant street life which is is a core part of Manchester identity. Huge thanks to Ste Wing and his team for amazing work on this. It was special.
Deep Flow: This was a truly mesmerising and fully emotional collaborative movement piece created by a number of groups across Manchester and the fantastic Company Chameleon. Not only was it a stunning end to the festival but it also showed just what is possible when you empower people to create something new but also just what is possible in the space. I tried in some way to sum it up in this poem and video responding to a deeply moving performance.

Nothing can really come close to expressing the gratitude and love I feel for all the members of the The Factory Assembly and the amazing team in Factory International who made this possible, nor can I sum up well just what I have learnt from this process except to say this: we came together and created something wonderful and in the face of troubling times, this was a beautiful things to do.

There are loads of fabulous images of the events on the Factory International Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/factory_international/
and some great insights into the whole process as part of the great BBC documentary Imagine The Factory: Made in Manchester