Riv Burns, SFTOC Creative Director and MIF Festival Square Producer, spotlights The Factory stage in Bexley Square and some of the artists playing at this year’s festival:

We are really excited this year to have teamed up with The Factory to curate a stage of up and coming artists from Greater Manchester via their MIF Sounds project. 

The Factory is Manchester International Festival’s landmark new cultural space, which is gradually emerging just across the River Irwell in sight of Chapel Street, and is set to open in 2023. 

During the pandemic, The Factory created MIF Sounds to offer support for musicians during testing times and the team have been able to continue this project with a new cohort in 2022. 

In 2021 I was fortunate enough to work with the first cohort of MIF Sounds artists when I programmed Festival Square for MIF and this year at SFTOC we have performances from every single artist on the 2022 roster. 

The cohort are so varied and styles range from RnB and synth-pop performers, classical musicians and sound artists to producers and record labels, it’s a true snapshot of the Greater Manchester Music scene, which felt very in line with our values and why we exist, a match made in heaven you could say.

On the Bexley Square stage we have performances from HMD & Joash, both from Sam Malik’s Management company whose aim is to support and develop British Asian musicians from Greater Manchester. RenzNiro has been selected by Jack Bowes, label owner of Fixed Abode who has selected him to represent the Salford based label at the festival. 

Other MIF Sounds artists across the rest of the  line up are Ku’umba, Mali Hayes and Obeka and we also have previous MIF Sounds artists, All Hands on Deck and OneDa performing at this years SFTOC. 

I’m really excited Sounds can be part of the creative journey of all of these amazing artists – don’t miss them!
Riv x

Read more about The Factory in their website. 

Learn more about the MIF Sounds artists for 2022 head to this article.