The Second Act: Our vision for the future of Manchester Collective
Manchester Collective and Abel Selaocoe in The Oracle. Photo: Gaëlle Beri
Last Friday, Manchester Collective was invited to join Arts Council England's National Portfolio of funded organisations – placing it alongside national treasures like the Hallé Orchestra, Slung Low, Manchester International Festival, and the National Theatre. It's a huge milestone, the result of years of planning, of late nights and weekends on the job, of tours, shows and dreams. We've been working towards this for a long time.
Becoming an NPO is a big deal for us. For the last six years, we've been operating pretty much hand-to-mouth, raising money project by project, tour by tour. Now, for the first time we can plan years ahead, secure in the knowledge that a significant part of our funding will arrive every quarter, come rain, hail or shine. At a time of great social and economic instability, and amongst brutal cuts to the budgets of many brilliant UK arts organisations, it's a thrilling vote of confidence in our work.
The vision that we laid out to Arts Council England was bold and uncompromising: ‘To reshape the future of classical music by creating radical artistic work in the north of England’. With this new support from the most important arts funder in the UK, we now have an extraordinary mandate (and responsibility) to realise that vision.
We believe in the subjective over the objective – in risks, in mistakes, in danger and jeopardy in live performance
So, what does that future look like?
We believe that the next 50 years in classical music will look very different to the last 50. We believe that much of the most exciting work being created in our sector is the result of close collaboration between musicians from different artistic and cultural worlds. We believe that for much of the 20th century, new audiences and new work have been dismissed in favour of an iron-clad, exclusive classical canon. We believe in representation. We believe in the subjective over the objective – in risks, in mistakes, in danger and jeopardy in live performance.
We believe in unique shows rather than cookie-cutter performances of standard repertoire. We believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to take part in cultural experiences, and that those experiences are often at the heart of a happy, fulfilled life. We want to live in a country where every child has the opportunity to sing, to act in a school musical, to learn the recorder, to create clay sculptures and paint pictures at home.
We believe that the north can become the cultural engine that drives this country towards a new artistic golden age. We believe that cutting edge musical work of international significance can, and must, be created here. We believe that truly great art can be relevant, accessible and beautiful.
Over the next three years, Manchester Collective will move into a new phase as an organisation. As one of my colleagues recently remarked to me, “It feels like the end of the beginning”. No doubt, there will be mistakes and hard times along the way, but our original values will always be at the core of our work: innovation, intimacy, passion, risk, authenticity, collaboration, and of course, excellence.
We can't wait to have you alongside us on the journey.
Adam Szabo is Artistic Director & Chief Executive of Manchester Collective