Accustomed to innovation and risk-taking, Manchester has taken the plunge again with its new international arts festival. Lisa Miles meets the man who everyone's counting on
A conversation with Alex Poots is like a whistle-stop tour through contemporary music and visual arts. Nodding knowingly seems the best approach when being bombarded with names such as Enio Moriconi, Arvo Pert and the Thxe9xe2tre du Chxe2telet Paris, while waiting for names that have slightly more resonance in the more uncultured mind: Damon Albarn, Glastonbury, Tate Modern.
This is cultural name-dropping on the widest-ranging scale possible. And Poots seems to have worked with them all.
But persevere and the conversation will ultimately drift towards names more familiar to the pages of Insider: Peter Saville, Manchester's creative director; Mike Oglesby, chairman of Bruntwood; John Roberts and Philip Green, former and present chief executives of United Utilites; Sir Howard Bernstein, Manchester city council's dynamic chief executive.
The link between these two so different worlds is Poots, director of the Manchester International Festival (MIF), which is billed as "the world's first international festival of original, new work". A biennial event, the first festival is being held between 28 June to 15 July 2007. It's a risky enterprise, but Poots found Manchester more than prepared for the challenge.
"I went to what I thought was an informal chat, which turned out to be a full-blown interview with eight of the great and the good of Manchester," he recalls, thinking back to November 2004. "I had a simple formula for them: "You can do a good international festival like a lot of other people. Or you could do something far riskier, but that is far more ambitious and would set Manchester apart from every other festival in the world.'"
Not expecting to be offered the job, he presented the city with five challenges:
it needed to be the world's first festival of original new work; it needed to engage with the world's greatest artists; they would have to move the festival from 2006 to 2007 to allow time to prepare; the budget would have to be at least £35m subsidy plus box office; and, once the city and its partners had handed over the money, they needed to fully relinquish editorial control.
Poots quickly discovered that the city's experience of the Commonwealth Games had created an understanding of civic responsibility shared by the public and private sectors.
"I joked that probably all sounded a bit too risky for them," he says. "I left the interview, got on the train and when I got off they phoned and agreed to all five challenges! I just had to say yes to the job. I didn't realise that I was telling them they needed to adopt a mini version of the Games model, a true public/private collaboration."
Poots vision for the festival reflects his appreciation of Manchester's history as a centre for innovation and of Manchester as the original, modern city. "I realised that I couldn't think of a festival anywhere in the world that's about making new work, being original and modern, about producing and making things. Rather than an artistic director going around the world shopping for nice shows and bringing them back," he says, "you craft them and showcase them, world premiere them in Manchester."
With the strength of this vision in mind, the city was prepared to take a risk in a way that Poots had never experienced elsewhere. "It was a calculated risk and one that Sir Howard and council leader Sir Richard Leese had put their full weight behind, but I have never witnessed such support."
Poots' career carried him from studying music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music to accepting the post of director of contemporary arts at English National Opera (ENO) three years ago. His knowledge of contemporary music is diverse, from his study of the African American tradition while at City University in London to taking the third act of Valkyrie to Glastonbury for ENO in 2004.
In fact he has worked with so many artists, from so many genres and so many countries, that a business magazine can provide but a mere snapshot. This eye for the new and the exciting is now focused on Manchester full time.
And the MIF's three top-tier sponsors - Bruntwood, United Utilities and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) - along with second-tier sponsor Manchester Airport, and the city council, have bought in to this expertise, while adding their own slant on proceedings.
"It was really important for me to create a festival model that would deliver on its artistic content, but in doing so address the issues that the sponsors wanted us to resolve - the festival has become more ambitious through their demands," says Poots.
"They want to launch with something of the highest artistic standard but something that everyone will feel they could have bought a ticket for. So we're launching with Monkey: Journey to the West, effectively a circus. It's a circus opera, but an opera written by the man behind Gorillaz. The holy grail was to keep the artistic standards high, but to find people who were hugely popular and shared our desires to be artistically very ambitious. Damon Albarn is one of the few people who can do that.
"We have associate director Christine Cort and Sir Howard to thank for working with me on finding a common ground where the artistic vision is intact but that delivers on a number of priorities. Going through that process has meant we have the Guardian as a media partner, because we have a programme that is very much artist facing."
On top of £32m from the council and £3500,000 from central government, the sponsors together brought £32m to the table. According to Arts & Business, this is the largest amount of private sector sponsorship any festival has ever raised in the UK, a tribute to the power of Manchester's public/private partnership model. Before Christmas 2006 Poots was still looking for another £3500,000, but the more money raised, the more acts he can book.
Poots believes that the MIF is the next natural step for a city that has been enjoying a positive media profile since the Games and reaped the rewards of hosting the Labour Party conference in 2006. Culture plays an oft-ignored role in bringing new business to a city.
"Manchester has a healthy cultural scene - the people of Manchester know that, but the rest of the UK needs to know it more and internationally it's not on the map as a major force," says Poots. "I don't think there's any difference between what Manchester has to offer culturally and Edinburgh, but Edinburgh has the world's biggest and most famous festival.
"Asking people to move to Edinburgh is an easier sell than Manchester, because it's seen as a cultural city. If Manchester can start building on its cultural fare through the festival and other initiatives then you have an easier sell. My job is to make sure that the festival delivers on its ambitions."
Already the sponsors are enjoying the benefits of being associated with the MIF brand. The first pre-festival commission in 2005 was the first ever live show from Albarn's Gorillaz. The show received seven five-star reviews, has won two awards and been nominated for a Grammy. Starry heights indeed for the likes of Oglesby and Bernstein.
"That's a taster of what the festival will deliver," says Poots. "There is immediate value for the sponsors. Our partners believe in what I do and I believe in what they do. United Utilities are working with us on our volunteers programme; Bruntwood are housing us; we're working with the NWDA on getting people from outside the region to come into the North West."
The festival and its budget of just over £38m, including box office takings, will bring tens of thousands of people into the city. At the Gorillaz show, 52 per cent of those attending were from Greater Manchester, 38 per cent from the rest of the UK and the rest were international. Poots hopes to emulate these figures with the festival itself by hosting world-class artists, in world premieres, with top international partners, and a wealth of UK exclusives that will attract visitors.
But let us not forget a certain city down the road is also positioning itself as an internationally acclaimed cultural hub. In 2008 Liverpool will be European Capital of Culture and the biennial MIF has been specifically timed to avoid a clash with both this and the Liverpool Biennial, an international festival of contemporary art. Poots exudes a sense of camaraderie.
"A strong Liverpool and a strong Manchester make a strong North West and there are no points to be gained from being competitive," he says. "Manchester delivering a successful festival only builds confidence that the North West can deliver. Liverpool doing well means that when we come back in 2009 the message has been reinforced."
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