Horizons Festival will be returning this summer

HOME and Community Arts North West (CAN) are thrilled to announce that the Horizons Festival will return to Manchester between Fri 21 Jun – Sun 23 Jun.

Horizons 2024 will respond to our theme Our Planet, Our Home. Co-curated with our Arts & Migration Network of displaced local artists, Our Planet, Our Home is an expansion on the national theme for this year’s national Refugee Week: Our Home.

HOME and CAN invite audiences to join them for newly commissioned theatre, performance, visual art, film, music, plus community events and family-friendly workshops.

Horizons will showcase work by locally based artists selected for the Horizons 2024 multi-art commissions. The commission programme is designed to support artists from refugee backgrounds to develop their creative practice.

On Fri 21 Jun, Horizons will present a brand-new theatre piece in Theatre 2 from Horizons’ commissioned theatre maker, A.M.M. Noor-Saiyem Khan. Also featured on stage is a dance piece by sanctuary-seeking women from the voluntary organisation, Afrocats, which has been choreographed by Maisha Kungu.

In a panel curated by national advocacy organisations Refugee Action and Asylum Matters, audiences are invited to join campaigners with lived experience of forced migration to hear about the national Communities Not Camps campaign, which advocates for the right for asylum seekers to continue living within communities.

On Sat 22 Jun, families can enjoy music and dance performances, plus a visual art exhibition and textiles created by children, young people, and adults recently settled in the UK through CAN’s community programme, which has been developed in association with Afrocats, Culture Bridge and Global Grooves. Artists included Godfrey Pambalipe, Amang Mardokhy, Magdalen Bartlett, Masresha Wondu, Kate Rothery, and Vicky Richards. There will also be creative workshops and a family friendly film screening in association with Celebrating Syria.

In addition, Horizons features a North West first, welcoming Counterpoints Arts’ critically acclaimed No Direction Home comedy show to the stage on Saturday evening. Featuring stand-up comedians from refugee and migrant backgrounds, No Direction Home is headlined by Tadiwa Mahlunge, who was one of Rolling Stone magazine’s picks of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023.

Tebu Muziki will entertain evening audiences in HOME’s Ground Floor Café Bar with their unique eclectic mix of African Jazz and Afro fusion.

On Sun 23 Jun, Horizons hosts a series of films, including a newly commissioned short film, made by film-maker Valeriia Lukianets, who came to the UK from Ukraine in 2022.

Audiences can also enjoy visual art commissions across the building, with an installation by Deeqa Ismail on HOME’s ground floor, and a commission by Nisa Chisipochinyi exhibited on HOME’s ground-floor windows throughout June and the beginning of July. HOME’s café bar will be home to a banner crafted by a group, including people who have experienced forced migration, who have worked with textile artists Kate Rothery and Vicky Richards in CAN’s Global Thread creative workshops. The banner features global textile techniques and repurposed fabrics.