Student Work

Introduction

Our MA/MFA Performance programme explores why we perform, who we perform for, and how radical performance impacts the world. Students create innovative performances across artistic borders, guided by an interdisciplinary team of experts. Students explore practice research through praxis, as defined by Nelson (2006). Throughout the programme they develop their own praxical way of working, considering how their experience constitutes knowledge, and how they can articulate these sensorial, embodied, and experiential knowledges with audiences. The creative journey may be turbulent but this engagement with praxis promises significant discoveries for the students. The course offers two pathways: Contemporary Performance and Laboratory Theatre. We are showcasing work from both specialisms, with four one-to-one contemporary performances and two solo laboratory theatre projects. 

MA Fine Art provides a stimulating environment in which you will be guided to develop your creative aspirations, reach a critical maturity, and gain the self-confidence and skills that will enable you to work as a successful artist. 

The course is studio practice driven and relies on experimentation and critical reflection supported by individualised mentoring, lectures, seminars and group critiques. It emphasises the articulation of ideas, development of working methods and the realisation of independent work. Seminars are structured to investigate a broad range of themes relevant to the practicing artist and provide a rich diet of inspiration. 

We are delighted to include a selection of work from our students for you to encounter during the Future of Practice Research Symposium. Please see our reception staff and helpers for more information on times and locations.

  1. Installations by Deeqa Ismail can be found on the ground floor of Grosvenor East.

Deeqa Ismail

Deeqa Ismail is a multidisciplinary Somali-British artist based in Stockport, Manchester, UK. Their work drifts in the in-between, where spirit meets matter, the archival blurs, and the ephemeral resists fixing. Their practice transforms the organic into the inorganic: sound stiffens into shape, memory presses into surface. Through print, VHS, and scent, they trace how archives glitch, how stories stutter, leak, and reform across time.

2. Lunchtime activities – 3rd Floor Grosvenor East, adjacent to the social/catering space, presented by:

Lisa Ford

Lisa Ford is a theatre director, performer, producer, maker, facilitator. Engaging communities, telling stories, connecting disparate ideas, to a shared creative goal. Working reactively, with multidisciplinary techniques, shaping work with found stimulus. 

She takes thread, some yours, some hers, some found in streets and in libraries. Often the threads are words and images or conversations with people. She weaves these to create theatrical pieces, that wrap audiences in collective feeling. 

‘Heirloom’ is a piece for one performer and one audience member. The soundscape is made from stories of invisible work in women’s lives. It is an invitation to sit, sew and share and to add your thread to the repair.

Gin Niemtus

Inventive and eclectic multidisciplinary UK-Artist blending music, puppetry, live art, theatre and facilitation. Using TTRPG’s and creative, accessible and immersive experiences. Kaleidoscopic in technique and committed to catalysing through art, I hope I can connect with you. Let me cradle your weird with mine.

Allan Purves

Allan Purves is an interdisciplinary artist based in Manchester. Allan creates work that works across the mediums of theatre, live art, film and live music. His work explores themes of adaptation, translation, utopia, intertextuality and climate. 

In creating a piece of work he aims to synthesize a wide range of elements, texts, people, landscapes and soundscapes in an effort to weave and orient things in an intertextual manner.

James Stanley

My name is James Stanley! I am an autobiographical artist based in Merseyside exploring the power of trauma healing and the unique aspects of human connection through performance! I hope I can create spaces for people to feel safe whilst giving people an opportunity to explore themselves too!

3. Evening performances – During the reception, presented by:

Nathan Burt

Based in Manchester, Nathan Burt is multi-disciplinary performer. Specialising in the techniques of Theatre Laboratory, Writing and Storytelling; blending these practices to create versatile performances and experiences. In his most recent performance Things That Happen In The Night, Nathan Burt explores the themes of imagination, loneliness and the nocturnal; while displaying the practices and techniques of Theatre Anthropology, Character and Story.

Silvana Maria Zuluaga Gomez 

Colombian performer and Theatre maker, Silvana explores the actor’s training and its potential to shine a light on the migrant identity and Latin American culture. She works with songs, physical scores, poems and archive intervention creating evocative and imaginative scenic experiences.