Manchester International Festival
WordPress
PHP
Spektrix
Vue
Greensock
Nuxt.js
jQuery
A sophisticated ecosystem of digital platforms and tools was created to support Manchester International Festival — one of the UK’s most prestigious cultural events, attracting world-class artists such as Damon Albarn, Björk, David Lynch, Monáe, Laurie Anderson, the XX, New Order, Idris Elba and FKA twigs. Whilst generating over £43 million for the Manchester economy.
The platforms spanned high-performance public websites, advanced ticketing systems integrated at scale, and robust organisational tools. All engineered to meet dramatic spikes in demand and support audiences, artists, and festival operations across a major international arts programme.
One of the leading worldwide incubators for new, cutting-edge art. Though the festival has an international outlook and reputation, it also showcases Manchester stories and talent.
New York Times
Music for a Busy City
Music for a Busy City reimagined Manchester as a living, breathing concert space, commissioning original works from internationally recognised artists including Mohammed Fairouz, Matthew Herbert, Huang Ruo, Anna Meredith, Olga Neuwirth and Philip Venables.The digital platform acted as an interactive map, allowing users to explore where and when each composition would appear across the city. Locations ranged from train stations to public squares, turning everyday spaces into unexpected performance venues.
Each location could also be experienced in immersive VR, placing users directly within the environment to hear the composition in context, while also discovering more about the artists and their work.
By combining geolocation, scheduling, and immersive media, the platform extended the project beyond chance encounters — giving audiences a way to actively explore and engage with music woven into the fabric of the city.
Underworld: Manchester Street Poem
Created in collaboration with Underworld and Manchester International Festival, Manchester Street Poem was a deeply human storytelling project centred on voices from Manchester’s homeless community.The accompanying digital experience translated these stories into an immersive, scroll-driven journey. As users moved down the page, layered audio recordings gradually shifted and evolved, blending voices, atmosphere, and emotion in real time. Each journey culminated in a portrait of the individual behind the story, grounding the experience in a powerful moment of connection.
These interviews were later transformed by Underworld into electronic compositions, broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music, extending the reach of the project beyond the physical installation. The result was a seamless fusion of narrative, sound, and interaction — using the web as a medium for empathy and discovery.
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