Future Everything

Taking place across Manchester, Future Everything (formerly Futuresonic) describes itself as art, music and ideas. It’s an accurate description, but Future Everything is more; egalitarian, welcoming, adventurous, playful, pragmatic. It does so much more than what it says on the tin. It doesn’t try to sound clever, it just is clever – and you can guarantee you’ll walk away smiling, or thinking, or frowning – or all three. There are reasons this festival is 15 years old and still growing.

A few years back, they set out to measure the carbon footprint of the entire festival.  Festivals are carbon-hungry beasts that use plenty of juice and attract visitors from long distances. So, Future Everything shared the results, and their learning’s, to help other event organisers try to understand how to address the difficult questions themselves..

It’s an area the festival is still exploring. Glonet, is an experiment in holding live, globally networked events, that aims to capture  ‘the essence of eventness without losing the magic of being with a group of people in the same place and at the same time’. You can read the results and feedback by groups from Sendai, Sau Paulo, Istanbul and Vancouver, who are taking part in this experiment, here.

Essentially, Future Everything is spearheading a movement that asks ‘what if’? It’s a hopeful, socially inclusive ‘what if?’ that recognises the value of putting people together to overcome all sorts of obstacles. The fuel, is creative thinking.

Amongst this year’s what if’s, Future Everything held a city debate on the future of Manchester; explored the possibilities of public access to data and the creative potential of using open data to re-imagine our cities ourselves.

Ben Cerveny, invited us to imagine what could happen if citizens could use technology to control not just their immediate, private environment – but public communal spaces?

Keri Facer asked, what if, we involved a more representative group of people in designing our future – young and old?

Darren Wershler asked, what if we stopped looking backwards at the loss of audience support for ‘traditional’ artforms like poetry, and looked at the other spaces poets occupy today – video games, social networks, subway walls?

Track the questions, feedback and conversations yourself at #futr on twitter, or make your way over to Manchester and get stuck in before the festival finishes.

Future Everything takes place in various venues across Manchester, 12-15 May 2010. The free art programme continues until 23 May.
To view the Art programme visit: www.futureeverything.org/art
For the Music programme visit: www.futureeverything.org/music
For latest news follow @futureverything on twitter.