Future Flares Festival 2026
From 21-23 January 21 – 23 January 2026, Future Flares Festival returned with more innovative and impactful performances, performance lectures, works in progress and workshops. Bringing some of the most important new voices in contemporary European performance making together in Manchester, Future Flares continues to encourage creative discourse about just how the art-form is responding to our changing world. This festival was curated by Senior Lecturer and Performance Research Group member Neil Mackenzie. This is the fourth annual Future Flares Festival and it was another massive success thanks to Neil’s hard work in organising this event.
PRG members involved in FFF
As well as Neil Mackenzie curating this festival, multiple PRG members featured in the programme this year!
A Cross Pollination Production is a performative lecture by PRG member Patrick Campbell which featured on day one of the festival. Reflecting on his journey through voice, this performance lecture is based on his 15-year experience as a student of Margaret Pikes, co-founder of the renowned Roy Hart Theatre (France), Campbell analyses the affective strata that influence his vocal practice, and how they inform the dramaturgical tactics in his musical work on stage.
To end the second day of the festival Jérémie Cyr-Cooke performed his one man show, Imperceptible. This performance blends virtuosic physical and text-based performance practices with the gothic tones of classical horror.
Michael Pinchbeck was involved in Pinchbeck & Smith’s Exit Music, which featured on the programme for the final day of the festival. This is a performance where Radiohead is turned into a story that jumps like a needle between 1997 and now, orbiting the connected histories of OK Computer and the Mir Space Station.
Brigid McLeer and Jenny Baines co-created An Image is an Act Not a Thing alongside Arts and Humanities students. An Image is an Act Not a Thing is a durational, collaborative exploration of live performance and image-making for screen and projection which also featured on the final day of the festival!
To find out more about these performances and about the performances from artists external to the University, follow the link below!
Read Neil’s curatorial statement for this year’s Future Flares Festival below!
