About Manifesta
Manifesta is a not-for-profit limited company which develops and delivers media, arts and cultural projects addressing cultural diversity, social exclusion / inclusion and anti-racism.
Production
We devise, develop, produce and manage programmes and projects - using film-making and art forms as mediums for exploring and commenting on key contemporary social issues.
We work in the UK and in Europe, brokering innovative collaborations, and involving carefully selected local partners.
Through our work, we tackle and contribute to current affairs debate - social, artistic, cultural.
We put marginalized voices - including those of old and new migrants - centre stage, online, on television, in conferences and at festivals, so they are heard. We also work with museums, bringing new curators and audiences.
We make a special point of encouraging and promoting youth participation and engagement - training and developing skills, creating intra and inter-generational links and lines of communications/dialogue where there are none or too few.
We offer particular expertise in film and digital media - and in the last five years, we have produced more than 100 short films, seen in museums and community centres, on European television and online, and at festivals and international conferences. We were nominated by the CRE 2000 Race in the Media Awards for the EMMA (European Multicultiral Media Agency) Initiative and New Europeans subsequent educational media toolkit. We received 2 UN Alliance of Civilisation Awards in December 2009, and again in November 2011.
Advice and Support
We also provide consultancy services on UK/European initiatives - advice, strategic development and evaluation.
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Our work
In My Footsteps is an interaction between people and place, centred on heritage, identity, art and culture, offering a variety of perspectives and interpretations of specific locations, personal visions, reminiscences, historical contexts, with dynamic, creative interactions.
A transnational initiative (London, Paris, Lisbon) designed to enable young people to explore intercultural dialogue - grounded in the specificity of personal and social opportunities, as well as the challenges which arise around new migrations and the making of new communities.
Young people from the North Kensington area in London participated in a pilot initiative focusing on heritage, curating and creative video making - 'breaking into' the Museum of London and re-interpreting their city history and heritage through short filmls.
Two groups of teenagers aged 14 to 19 from the London Borough of Newham participated in a unique experience: assisted by video artists and historians, the teenagers uncovered sites related to historical racism and anti-racism in the West India Docks area of London and expressed their interpretation of this history and heritage creatively, using digital media and their imaginations.
Opportunity to be Brilliant
In early 2012, we embarked on a new initiative, aimed at students and recent graduates about to start their professional life. Working with the Chemistry Group, the challenge was to give art students and recent graduates a first professional experience - to make short films illustrating some Chemistry case studies, responding to a client brief - and win each £1,000 in the proces.
Blog
The Bertelsmann Foundation is currently looking for outstanding initiatives/approaches who offer innovative solutions to urgent societal challenges on the theme ‘Living Together in A Culturally Diverse Society’. They identified 2 Manifesta initiatives that they wanted to explore: Belonging (London, Paris and Lisbon) and In My Footsteps (London).
Step by step is a multi-disciplinary series of seminar bringing together artists and researchers from across disciplines whose work uses, addresses, results in, or engages with walking.
This year’s first Step by Step will focus on issues of walking and migration, and feature Dr. Göze Saner (Goldsmiths); Marion Vargaftig (Manifesta); and Dr. Georgie Wemyss (University of East London).