Manipulate Festival, Edinburgh’s international festival of animated film, puppetry, and visual theatre, returns for its 17th edition in February 2024, marking the start of the 40th year of Manipulate Arts, formerly Puppet Animation Scotland. Manipulate Festival will once more celebrate international and homegrown work that tells stories primarily through imagery instead of text or breathes life into the inanimate, crossing borders and welcoming audiences of all backgrounds into the fold.
The 2024 Festival will once again spread across the city of Edinburgh with live performance, screenings and workshops taking place in venues including the Traverse Theatre, Festival Theatre, Fruitmarket, Summerall, WHALE Arts, The French Institute and Dancebase as well as reaching into audiences’ homes with its online programme. This year’s programme has been supported by three associate programmers: Natasha Ruwona, Emily Nicholl and Holly Summerson. With artist support and development a huge part of Manipulate Arts’ work, the Festival is delighted to welcome an international exchange with artists from Finland, Norway, Belgium and Germany.
Continuing their tradition of bringing light to a dark time of year, Manipulate Festival 2024 will serve audiences with an acrobatic Thomas Hardy adaptation and a farcical robotic dinner service; party with an existential pickle; contemplate the end of our world; witness dancers inside a giant, mesmerising video cube; take a psychedelic journey through a faraway planet ruled by blue giants; and much more, across a diverse and exciting range of visual artforms.
This year’s Festival interrogates the many ways in which we relate to the world around us, exploring visions of the future – what is in store for us globally and as individuals, our relationship to the climate that surrounds us, how technology can hinder and help us and how we form our identity in relation to culture.
It will present a varied programme of live performances; film screenings; discussions; workshops and events. Thanks to funding from Film Hub Scotland, there is a significantly expanded film programme for 2024, including the Scottish debut of One Bum Cinema Club, which will pop up around the city to welcome audiences into a cinema screening for one, with 3 programmes of accessible animated film waiting for the people of Edinburgh to discover them.
Manipulate Arts Artistic Director and CEO Dawn Taylor said “The magical thing about the artforms at the heart of Manipulate Festival is their endless potential for innovation, and audiences can expect some exciting new approaches to puppetry and visual theatre this year unlike anything they’ve seen before. Our animation programme is the biggest it has ever been, creating a real moment of celebration for animation in Scotland. The range and calibre of presented artists, alongside the contributions of our artist associate programmers, have really worked to elevate this year’s programme.
Artists and creative organisations are struggling more than ever in this financial climate – but as ever our community of artists has responded to these challenges with ingenuity and creativity, making for a dynamic programme in the 40th anniversary year for Manipulate Arts. ”
Manipulate Festival 2024 will kick off with an opening party at the Fruitmarket Gallery on Thursday 1st February and will run till Sunday 11th February with further news to be announced in January.
Tickets for the 2024 festival are now on sale on Manipulate Arts’ website www.manipulatearts.co.uk along with programme details.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 