About Manifesta
Manifesta’s core aim is to facilitate creative expression of marginalised and youth voices (including migrants) on key issues, in order to express young people’s ideas and perspectives, and put them ‘centre stage’ - using traditional exhibition sites as well as more unusual public spaces to reach the widest possible audience mix, and to provoke refreshed discourses on key current social and cultural affairs.
Our activities range across developing learning skills associated with creative film-making; engaging with history/heritage learning; devising and disseminating educational packages for formal as well as informal learning; employing cutting edge/unusual dissemination/communication formats and the latest technology, QR Codes; facilitating cross cultural and inter-generational dialogue; advising others engaged in related projects, and sharing our work achievement and expertise with others via conferences and seminars.
In the last 4 years, concentrating on creative video/film narratives (delivered in projects themed around belonging, and history and heritage) we have workshop-produced more than 100 short films of broadcast quality, which have been seen in the UK and internationally - in museums and community centres, in the courtyard of an housing estate, on European television (broadcast and online), at festivals, conferences etc. Each film produced involves the participation of 2 to 10 young contributors. Thus hundreds of new and authentic youth voices have been brought to wider audiences through careful communication.
For each project, we use a chosen framework and theme, which we adjust to each project location, and we organise tailored induction sessions to prepare the adult team. The young UK based participants meet their European counterparts, physically as well as virtually, and we ensure as far as is possible that the young film-makers are present when their work is exhibited (including internationally); this further develops their communication skills, while creating intra and inter-generational links and lines of communication and dialogue (local, national, international).
To date we have been working in and from the UK, with projects also extending into other European countries. As part and parcel of our work, we carefully create/broker innovative collaborations with local community-action partners at each of our project sites – so adding to their existing youth expression practice, and enhancing the likelihood of lasting project legacies.
Manifesta was founded by Colin Prescod and Marion Vargaftig, who have been working together for 15 years as producers, advisers, supervisers etc. - in the UK and overseas.
Together, they have developed and/or produced UK and international initiatives with the BBC, the International Broadcasting Trust, Save the Children, Separated Children in Europe Network, Runnymede, The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and other NGOs in the field of youth,creativity, cultural diversity and anti-racism.
As consultants, they have worked with Nesta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Art Council England (London) etc.
A notable example of the international strand of Colin's and Marion's work was the creation in 1997 of the European Multicultural Media Agency - EMMA- initiating and delivering a competition-based, 4X25 minutes documentary film series for young people (17-25) across the 18 countries then associated with the European Union. The project was supported by 3 DGs of the European Commission - which was a first.
The four films were co-produced with public service broadcasters BBC, France2, UR (Sweden),TeleacNOT (Netherlands), RTP (Portugal), and have been widely broadcast on European TVs and screened at a number of prestigious documentary film festivals in Europe and North America. ‘New Europeans', an educational video-pack incorporating the films, received a (UK) Commission for Racial Equality nomination for Race in the Media Awards in 2000, and was distributed in the UK, France and Belgium in English and French versions.
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Colin Prescod
Since moving from a twenty-year academic career (lecturing in political economy and sociology) to join the BBC in 1989, where he became Head of the African/Caribbean Programmes Unit (TV) (1991/1992), Colin Prescod has worked mainly in film, TV, theatre and most recently in advisory-curating in the museums and archives heritage sector (advisor to two new major permanent galleries, opened in November, 2007 - London, Sugar and Slavery, Museum in Docklands, London, and Atlantic Worlds, National Maritime Museum, London). He served on the Greater London Authority's Heritage Diversity Task Force (2005 to 2008).
Colin is Chair of the Institute of Race Relations, London, (and is a member of the editorial working committee of the IRR's international journal, Race and Class); Chair of the Association for Cultural Advancement through Visual Art (ACAVA), London; and Chair of Carnival Village Ltd, London.
Colin was also founding-Chair, 1993-2001, of the DRUM, Centre for British Black Arts and Culture, Birmingham; was invited to contribute to the GLA Cultural Strategy, Steering Group, 2001; was an appointed member of the Mayor's Notting Hill Carnival Review Group, 2001-2003; and was an appointed member and Vice-Chair of the Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage, 2003-2005. In 2004/5, he served on the Learning Committee of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).
Marion Vargaftig
Following a first job at the French Foreign Office, promoting French art and culture though documentary films and exhibitions, Marion Vargaftig left to focus her work on what interested her most, other people's culture. She then worked as an independent, initiating and leading several European projects in relation to Television and the representation of migrants and ethnic minorities.
Marion is a leader/producer of European programmes and media projects, working at the interface of policy and practice. Her expertise is in developing projects associating media and culture as a catalyst for social change. She has a particular expertise in film and television - and has extensive international experience, initiating and delivering projects ranging from conferences, exhibitions, films, publications in many EU countries and beyond, and involving a variety of partners and funders.
She has a particular interest in putting youth and other marginalised voices (migrants, refugees, cultural and ethnic minorities) centre stage, in the media. She speaks fluent English as well as her French mother tongue.
Marion has also expertise on Minority/Cultural Diversity in the media in Europe, having previously led media research projects including with/for UNESCO and the Council of Europe. Her writings are published in the UK, France, Sweden.
Over the last 10 years, her work has focused more particularly on initiative involving young people, in particular those on the margins, using video for youth expression and creativity and providing multiple platforms for these voices to be heard.
She has worked with numerous organisations, ranging from cultural organisations and institutions such as the Pompidou Centre, the Museum Cité Nationale de l'Histoire de l'Immigration, Arts Council, ICA, International NGOs - e.g. UNICEF, Save the Children and Separated Children in Europe Network,IBT, NESTA, JCWI, Runnymede Trust etc.
Between 2003 and 2009, Marion was an advisor to The European Cultural Foundation (ECF) for theoneminutesjr project - in charge of the strategic development of the broadcast element for this youth digital media project with European public service broadcasters. She set up a network of more than 12 public service broadcasters in the UK, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Hungary and Bulgaria, which became the backbone of the project. More recently, she has contributed to the development of StrangerFestival, and was Strangerfestival media consultant for the second edition which took place in Amsterdam, in late 2009.
