Our Manifesto for Gender Equality launched at a special event in Manchester on International Women's Day 2022.
Co-produced with Submerge, the night featured the world premiere of a large-scale and immersive audiovisual installation by Urban Projections (Rebecca Smith).
Accompanying the installation, we commissioned “genre-splicing genius of British electronic music” Loraine James and poet Bitez to create a custom soundtrack and spoken word respectively.
We also had DJ sets throughout the night from the likes of Girls Don't Sync, DJ Chaise, Shannen SP and Hur̃guf.
“The creation of the installation, and the process of creating it, represents a shift in equilibrium. The whole piece pivots around ideas of addressing a rebalance. I was really interested to explore these ideas of parity, and how we reach that point of change.”
Rebecca Smith (Urban Projections)
Meet the Manifesto Makers
In the lead-up to the event we recruited four creative minds to support the creation of the installation. From conceptualisation to the ins-and-outs of the technical design and install.
Louisa Parry is an early-career mixed media artist & arts producer, mostly working with textiles, ceramics and paint. She creates abstract work with a focus on texture, and is interested in the contrast of chaos & control: be it in the distinction between nature & the built environment in the outer world, or exploring concepts around mental health in our inner spaces.
Michelle Wren works in many forms and scales mostly from materials sourced from industrial waste. She builds sets and projection maps them, video edits, animates and experiments with AR. She runs a DIY TV channel Projectile Vomit TV where she experiments with blending digital and analogue media and techniques and she co-runs Dingle Community Print Workshop a screen-printing workshop for low/unwaged people.
Veronica Harradence uses her skills as an Intelligent Automation Developer to create generative art in her spare time. She is interested in the artistic exploration of code and how it can be reimagined to be more accessible, engaging and reflective.
Alexis Maxwell is an interdisciplinary storyteller and emerging artist based across the North West.Using a blend of text, tech and animation she explores her lived experience of sexuality, mental illness and racial injustice. Reaching across disciplines to discover ways of creating contemporary folklore and fairytale, with a keen interest in projection and its relationship to performance. Self-taught animator and long-time fan of all things spoken word, she draws from community-based practices to breathe life into auto-ethnographic poetry.
“Having this opportunity has encouraged me to be an independent VJ and projection mapper. I have my first solo gig in April and have been developing an idea with a local sound system. I wouldn’t be doing either of those things without the opportunity provided by Brighter Sound and the skills and confidence I have got from working with Urban Projections.”
Be part of the change
The Manifesto is available to read or listen to now.
And the work doesn’t stop here. If you want to be part of the change please sign our open letter to the Government.
