Barnaby Festival 2018 News

Lumen Prize

Zarah Hussain wins People’s Choice award

We’ve been working with Macclesfield’s own Zarah Hussain on a project for Barnaby 2018, so it’s a particular pleasure to congratulate her on the award of the Lumen Prize. The world’s leading digital art prize, Lumen recognises Zarah’s exquisitely reflective work Numina, which was on display at the Barbican in London earlier this year. You can see a short film about the work here. We’re looking forward to developing our project with Zarah for 2018. Watch this space…

Big Sing, Big Play

THE RETURN…

Those who could join us for the pilot sessions of the Big Sing and the Big Play were bowled over by the energy, camaraderie, and sheer good fun of making music together from scratch. So it’s fantastic to be able to welcome Pauls Sartin and Hutchinson (together Belshazzar’s Feast) back to Macc for another round of tunesmithing in October. This time, there are two chances to join in; so even if you didn’t make the first session, come along next week!

• Tuesday 24th October, 7pm – 8.30pm

Singers: United Reformed Church, Park Green, Macclesfield SK11 7NA

Musicians: Community Art Space, 2nd floor, Sutton Mill, Heapy St, Macclesfield SK11 7JB

• Wednesday 25th October, 7pm – 8.30pm

All together: Community Art Space (address above)

Open Meeting

Community ArtSpace, 23 November 2017

Are Open Meetings the most fun you can have on a Thursday night? Quite possibly. Either way, this is your chance to hear how we’re progressing towards 2018’s Festival, to make your voice heard, and to find out how you can volunteer or support the Festival. Our wonderful new Volunteer Co-ordinator, Anne Davies, will be there to say hello and discuss how you might be able to help; so please do come along and join us at Community Artspace on Heapy Street, from 7-9pm, 23 November. See you there!

Call for proposals

Artists submit rich and varied range of ideas

Our Open Call for local proposals has resulted in a really excellent and wide-ranging collection of ideas, across all artforms and disciplines; sincere thanks go to everyone who put so much effort into their submissions. We’re going through them now, and hope to be able to bring as many as possible through to the Festival in June 2018. If you didn’t quite make the deadline, but still have a great idea, please feel free to send it in – even if it needs a little more work, we’re here to be inspired.

Festival Manager

Experience, vision, talent. What more could we want?

We are very pleased to announce that our new Festival Manager is Mandy Martinez. Macclesfield resident, trained actor, publisher and experienced festival hand (including a pivotal role in this year’s Manchester International Festival), Mandy will be working closely with Karl Wallace, who will be overseeing 2018’s artistic programme. Welcome, Mandy!

More opportunities

Paid and voluntary roles with the Festival

We’re bidding a fond and grateful ‘au revoir’ to Abi Sherratt, our Finance and Office Co-ordinator, at the end of October. An early Barnaby volunteer and long-standing friend of the Festival, Abi has been a key part of the back-office team for the last year or so, and we thank her for all her hard work in keeping our admin up to scratch. However, the role has grown over the past few months, and so we’re now looking for someone to support not only the core delivery of the Festival, but also the administration of our Community Outreach project (generously funded for the coming year by the Taylor Family Foundation). You can find out more and apply by following this link.

We’re also inviting applications for two additional Trustees. Please contact David Gooda if you’d like to find out more.