Festival: Future Everything Festival, National Football Museum, RNCM, Town Hall and more, Opens Thurs 27 March
A festival you’ll see annually plastered across the city, but also one that not many (besides the poindexters and Mac-bonkers) know much about, it's 'an internationally recognised R&D hub for digital culture'. Eh? what's an R&D hub.
Still, soon the whole world will go digital. We'll all be eating pixels and 10-year old Korean boys holed up in their bedrooms with the ability to drop a Wotsit onto the head of a Turkmenistan shepherd from a remote control drone will be ruling the world - We better get on board.
Now in its nineteenth year, this week long ‘festival as laboratory’ event brings together 700 delegates from design, art, business and academia for world premieres of participatory artworks, performances, innovative ‘beep-bop’ live music, lasers, city-wide installations, smartarse discussions on the future, playful experimentation and a fair bit of techie tossing about.
Full programme of events and tickets here.
Future Everything
Art: BCNMCR, TwentyTwentyTwo Basement, Opens Thurs 27 March
A smartarse Barcelona/Manchester moniker that.
Manchester welcomes for the second year the best Barcelona has to offer by way of contemporary graphic design. A group of internationally recognised designers and independent studios from the Catalan city will showcase their finest work at this free exhibition in NQ’s best ‘where the fuck is it?’ venue.
FREE. Open for four weeks. More here
BCNMCR
Art: Encountering Corpses, Sacred Trinity Church, Until 10 April
Beautiful building, beautiful exhibition. This MMU exhibition looks at our relationship with death. The glorious images of Paul Koudounaris - amongst other arresting work by Sue Fox - are very much worth the short walk from Deansgate to Chapel Street in Salford. Koudounaris, a resident of Los Angeles, told Confidential: "We've stored death away and out of sight, made it a barrier not a transition. These images show how, in other times and other cultures, death has been seen as part of life, not separate, not to be ignored or hidden." Read about Sacred Trinity here.
FREE. More here.
Paul Koudounaris with images of death and the world's biggest hat
Film: RoboCop (1987), Gorilla, Friday 28 March, 7pm
In collaboration with cult-horror-sci-fi dorks Grimm Up North, Gorilla bar on Whitworth Street are to a hold a one-off screening of the director’s cut (all the good stuff without meddling film studio bigwigs) of the 80s classic with Full HD remastered wizardry.
‘When a good cop (Peter Weller) gets blown away by ruthless thugs, innovative scientists and doctors piece him back together as an unstoppable crime-fighting cyborg called Robocop. But while cleaning up the streets of violence-ravaged Detroit, Robocop is tormented by memories of his former life, and now he’s out for more than justice…he wants revenge.’
Market: Stockport Foodie Friday, Stockport Market Place, Fri 28 March
Stockport’s #FoodieFriday takes to Stockport Market on the final Friday of every month and has been pulling foodies in to this unlikely gourmet destination from across the North West for nearly a year now. Good on ‘em. Lord knows Stockport needed a kick up the jacksie.
They’ll be reggae music from The Moot, funnies from comedian Matt Tiller and all the usual craft ale, baked and cheesy goods alongside Friday Foodie virgins Piggy Smalls (hotdogs) and ChockyChurros (Spanish donuts). Returning to the market there’ll also be: Mio Pizza, Street Fodder’s Asian delights, Little Red Pizza’s paella and tasting plates, Ostrich Direct’s ostrich and crocodile burgers and Big D’s big BBQ.
Just in time to plump up for summer. That’s what you’re meant to do right?
FREE. More here.
Stockport Market
Music: Craig Charles Funk & Soul Club ft. Calibro 35, Band On The Wall, Sat 29 March, Doors 9pm
Craig Charles is a lot of things: Actor, author (Craig Charles Almanac of Total Knowledge), journo, presenter, voice-over, Scouser, dwarfer, even poet. But what he excels at, what he truly revels in (besides cane’ing it) is the funk and soul. Charles is just about the most animated and enthused DJ we’ve ever come across… probably the sweatiest too.
Charles will be commanding the decks until the early hours and welcoming Italian funky jazz groove project Calibro 35 performing live. Smashing.
Club: MVSON, Sankey’s, Sat 29 March, Doors 10.30pm
The next sweaty instalment in the Sankey’s 2014 calendar welcomes Tania Vulcano, German Brigante and Cuartero. Uruguayan Vulcano has lived on some far-flung island called Ibiza for the last eight years honing her craft. She became resident as DC10’s Circo Loco and Space five years ago and has now bagged the residency at the illustrious London Club, the End and also a brace of venues in Barcelona.
Tania Vulcano
Mums: Mother’s Day, Offers Are Everywhere, Sunday 30 March
There’s so much going on in Manchester for Mother’s Day that I don’t even have room to write anything lightly witty… so here’s something crap: ‘I decided Mum should be pampered for Mother’s Day. So bought her some nappies.’ And off we go…
If she’s a hungry Mother, Montpellier’s in Northern Quarter are doing two courses for £16 and three for £20, Sam’s Chop House are offering two courses for £19 or three for £22.50, luxe hotel Malmaison are offering three course plus champagne and hand-made chcolates for £29.95, whilst Harvey Nics are offering a three course meal accompanied by a pianist for £30 or Afternoon/Champagne Tea for £17.95.
If she’s a sporty Mother then Mums can bowl for free on Sunday at Dogbowl, if she’s a done-up Mother she can enjoy a complimentary mini makeover at Selfridges, or if she likes tea, which goes without saying, TV personality Yvette Fielding is hosting a special Mum’s tea afternoon in Proper Tea at Manchester Cathedral.
Phew. Can you imagine if you’d been collectively mothered in a hippy commune. What a bloody nightmare that’d be.
Mothers are ace... except this one, she's rubbish
Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing, Royal Exchange Theatre, Until 3 May
Maria Aberg directs the Royal Shakespeare Company in this production of arguably Shakespeare's best comedy. Much Ado is a play of parallel love stories and a fair bit of flapping about.
Claudio and Hero meet and, as was the tradition in the sixteenth century, instantly in love - they were simpler times. Beatrice and Benedick, who spend most of the play tearing each other new ones, also fall in love. It's one big love-in. However, the meddling Don John sticks his oar in and things take a turn for the tits-up.
Royal Exchange Theatre
Music: The Four Tops and The Temptations, Phones4U Arena, Weds 2 April
Straight outta hitsville USA this one, two of Motown’s most recognised and celebrated acts belting out three hours of non-stop seat wobblers like Reach Out I’ll Be There, I Can't Help Myself, Loco in Acapulco and My Girl. Ok, one of the original members remains - maybe even none – but who really cares? It’s just a big ole' singalong.
Tickets £47.25 here.
Exhibition: Neon Beasts by Jamwah, Kosmonaut, Opens Thurs 3 April
Manchester illustrator and designer Jamie Roberts aka Jamwah will be hosting his first solo exhibition, Neon Beasts, on the walls of Kosmonaut in the Northern Quarter. The surreal animal portrait series, designed and created especially for Kosmonaut, is based around an anti-hunting motif and produced using an innovative 2D digital sculpting technique.
FREE. Portfolio here.
Jamwah
Singles: Confidential Singles Night, Velvet Central, Thurs 3 April
You know how it is… You’re busy with work, you’ve got too many friends/not enough friends to spend time with, you don’t like your hair at the minute, You’ve Been Framed is on telly.
It’s not easy finding a partner. Especially when you have thirteen toes. But there’s someone out there for everyone. At least that’s what they keep telling me. With 1400 dating sites in the UK alone, the internet is a minefield and mostly populated by crackpots and smelly people. So the Confidential Singles Night is taking it back to basics, real people drinking real drinks in a real venue talking to real faces with their real mouths. Sod the internet. What’s it ever done for us? (Manchester Confidential is available online only).
Tickets £20.45 including a drink and canapés. Book here.
Do it face-to-face... because he's online waiting
Art: Nature In The City, Manchester Art Gallery, Thurs 3 April, 5.30-8.30pm
An evening inspired by Thomas Horsfall, the son of a wealthy Manchester city cotton merchant, Horsfall opened a Manchester museum in 1877 to educate and inspire the working classes with ‘spring, nature and the beauty all around us’.
This evening will include a ‘Who Was Horsfall?’ tour, live music and an Urban Gardening talk discussing the bee hives on the gallery roof, the River of Flowers project and plans to give the city a good bloody greening over.
FREE. More here.
Manchester Art Gallery
Food: Bang Thai’dy Charity Burger, SoLIta, Available for two weeks
Channel 4’s The Taste winner (the one with Nigella), Debbie Hall-Evans from Horwich, has created a special burger for Northern Quarter’s purveyor of filthy-food-with-a-clean-shirt-on, SoLITa. The Bang Thai’dy Burger features a chuck steak and bone marrow pattie, Chinese leaf noodles with a Thai nam jim sauce topped with crispy chicken skin and served on a toasted sesame seed brioche bun. We don’t know what just happened there… but we think we like it.
£2 from each burger will go to Bolton Hospice @solitaNQ
Debbie hated forks
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