A new plan for residencies of creatives between Sendai and Manchester has been made following a visit by Mr. Gen Amano from Japan this week.
In March I was invited to Sendai in Japan to speak at the Sendai Creative Forum - Local to Global, Global to Local about FutureEverything and its impact on the city of Manchester. View my blog post here.
Sendai Creative Forum 2009
A return visit took place this week, with my host in Japan, Mr. Gen Amano, the Director of Industry Promotion from The City of Sendai, visiting Manchester to develop a partnership between the cities.
Sendai is a regional capital to the north of Tokyo, sharing many similarities with Manchester. It has the 3rd strongest creative industries sector in Japan, and is 1st for music.
Gen Amano is leading efforts to build the creative industries in Sendai, and his idea is to do this through a partnership with FutureEverything.
The plan is to establish a programme of residencies / exchanges between FutureEverything (Manchester/May) and the new Occur festival (Sendai/October). Our aim is to showcase creative visionaries, with the focus on partnering artists and creative organisations in the two cities. We also plan to stage a remote collaboration event during FutureEverything and Occur.
Together we did the rounds of the key people working in Manchester who can help him in his efforts, including Northwest Vision and Media, NWDA, MIDAS, Manchester Digital and Manchester Digital Development Agency.
It was great to catch up with Amanosan, and I am looking forward to building the collaboration between our two cities. (Thanks to Katie Gallagher from MIDAS for her help during the visit.)