Tick tock, goes the clock

The Best of Manchester Awards close for entry at Midnight this Friday (1 May).

Don’t forget, don’t miss out, do get online and do get your entry in.

All the information you’ll need is here. Good luck…

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On your marks

And we’re off. After lining up a phenomenal judging panel, running a design competition, sorting out an advertising campaign and some top sponsors (including our main supporter, Marketing Manchester), making partnership deals with the likes of MMU, Castlefield Gallery, Cornerhouse and Blueprint Studios – and generally running ourselves ragged for the last four months or so – The Best of Manchester Awards are now open for entries.

The hunt is now on to find the artists, musicians and designers whose boundary-breaking work deserves the Best of Manchester crown.

As you know, our 24 judges include Peter Saville, Wayne Hemingway, the Turner Prize winning artist, Jeremy Deller, Tim Marlow (White Cube, London), Miranda Sawyer, Yvette Livesey (In The City) and Luke Bainbridge (Observer Music Monthly).

But the awards are far more than a pat on the back from these industry greats. And, while we grant you that the £6k that’s up for grabs (£2k per category) is also a sweetener, the awards are about more than the money. They’re even about more than the chance to take part in a major exhibition at Urbis.

What makes these awards special is the chance that the winners get to kick-start their careers with the kind of contacts and professional development that money can’t buy. Think about it: you’re a young band, say, and you’ve got the chance to get your music in front of Universal’s head of A&R (Caroline Elleray) and the woman who runs In The City (Yvette Livesey). Or you’re a fine artist, and all of a sudden your work is being seen by Urbis, Castlefield Gallery, White Cube and a Turner Prize winning artist.

Chances like that just don’t come along very often.

And if that doesn’t persuade you, here’s what happened to some of 2008’s winners and nominees:

Art award winner Naomi Kashiwagi has gone on to stage performances at the Barbican (London) and the Whitworth Art Gallery. She took advantage of an Urbis-sponsored trip to the Frieze and Zoo art fairs to develop her practice, featured in a group show at Cornerhouse at the end of 2008, won the Individual Artist Award at the Art Council’s art08 awards and has secured a solo exhibition in Tokyo this year.

Fashion winner Simon Buckley, who runs the Rags to Bitches boutique, went on to win Best Female Clothes Shop in the Galaxy 2008 Awards and was Highly Commended for Best Womenswear in the Drapers Awards. After a Guardian write-up, Rags to Bitches have since run a series of sold-out fashion events at Urbis.

Fashion nominee Nabil El Nayal is the darling of Vogue and has been tipped by the national press as ‘the next face of British womenswear’. He swiped the Womenswear Award at Graduate Fashion Week this summer and won a place on the Royal College of Arts’ Womenswear MA (alumni include Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen). Thanks to Urbis, Nayal’s couture collection became the star of its own fashion shoot in Flux Magazine, with the resulting photographs displayed at Harvey Nichols Manchester in October 2008.

So, what are you waiting for? The awards open for entries today (16 February) and close at
Midnight on 1 May 2009. Entry is online. The shortlist will be announced on 15 June, and the winners announced live at an awards ceremony at Urbis on 23 July.

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Let the work begin…

We are now working on The Best of Manchester Awards 2009.
From vintage fashion to the catwalk, from a music collective to pioneering record labels, and from conceptual art to a politically motivated artists’ collective, the 2008 Best of Manchester Awards summed up Manchester’s creativity and innovation. Not only that: with judges of national and international calibre and a 65% increase in the overall number of entries, the Best of Manchester Awards 2008 were a huge success.

But we’re not resting on our laurels. Work has already begun to make the 2009 awards bigger, better and a whole lot more fun.

We are currently looking for media media supporters, sponsors and partners to work with to help us take this key event on Manchester’s cultural calendar to the next level. If you want to get involved, please e-mail caroline at urbis dot org dot uk.

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Shortlist announced!

After much deliberation, several bottles of wine, a few arguments, some cajoling and a bit of brutal editing, the judges agreed the shortlists for the Best of Manchester Awards 08. And they are:

MUSIC

Music promoter Richard Cheetham is the brains behind independent label, club night and fanzine, High Voltage. Cheetham began High Voltage as a student and, over the past five years, has gone on to publish music by bands including The KBC, The Answering Machine and Nine Black Alps. It’s this entrepreneurial spirit – and his support of new music in Manchester – that won Cheetham praise from the judges.

Taking a similar entrepreneurial tack is Duncan Sime. At the forefront of the folk scene in Manchester, Sime developed the club night and independent label, Red Deer Club. Sime has published twelve releases by artists such as Sara Lowes, Sophie Pigeons, George Thomas and David A Jaycock. Red Deer Club is now attracting attention from music lovers across the UK – it was recently feted by Word magazine as the ‘Manchester hub’ of the nu folk scene – and it is his commitment to new music that ensured Sime a place on the shortlist.

Jasper Wilkinson, as part of multimedia collective I Am Your Autopilot, fuses music, animation and visual art to create visually and musically arresting new work. In the shortlisted entry, a music video entitled Smokescreens, I Am Your Autopilot blend hard-edged electronica with choral sounds, using synthesizers, guitar and multi-layered harmonies to create what Wilkinson describes as ‘sonic landscapes’. Smokescreens was produced in collaboration with Manchester-based TV and film producer, DeathtothePixels.

FASHION

Fashion entrepreneur Simon Buckley runs vintage boutique Rags to Bitches. Much more than a run-of-the-mill second hand store, Rags to Bitches offers a bespoke dressmaking service; has its own label; runs sewing, pattern-cutting and dressmaking courses; counts celebrities such as Celine Dion among its fans; supports up-and-coming local designers and was recently voted by The Daily Telegraph as one of Britain’s best boutiques. It was the venture’s potential for expansion that won high praise from the judges.

Nabil El-Nayal is a designer whose dramatic, monochrome collection immediately caught the attention of the judges. A graduate of Manchester School of Art, El-Nayal designed a seven outfits inspired by the Elizabethan era. While the clothes are visually arresting, El-Nayal’s work is also commercially viable, with his collection ranging from the extreme (a dress with six sleeves, for example) to outfits that are capable of making the leap from the catwalk to the high street.

Another graduate of Manchester School of Art, Hasan Hejazi has focused his creative energies on establishing his own womenswear business. As well as creating beautiful, bespoke clothing, however, Hejazi is an experienced stylist and offers a personal shopping service for his Manchester-based clients. It is Hejazi’s entrepreneurial spirit, alongside his talent as both a designer and a stylist, which secured his place on the final shortlist.
ART

Artist Paul Harfleet’s practice combines installation, photography and an interest in the peculiarities of everyday urban life. His work includes The Pansy Project, a series of interventions at sites of homophobic attack or abuse. Beginning as a small-scale autobiographical work in Manchester, The Pansy Project has gone on to appear in London, Liverpool, Egilsstaðir (Iceland), Berlin and New York. Harfleet is also behind The Apartment, an artist-led exhibition space inside a one-bedroom council flat. It is his contribution to the arts in Manchester that secured Harfleet a place on the shortlist.

Conceptual artist Naomi Kashiwagi has long been interested in obsolete technological objects such as manual typewriters and gramophones. Her past work includes turning gramophones into record turntables and employing a piano as a drawing instrument. The work for which Naomi was shortlisted is ‘||: Repetition :||, Fugue No.1 in QWERTY for 8 Typewriters’, a music and text score composed for typewriters that saw four pianists and four percussionists ‘playing’ the typewriters. Kashiwagi’s originality won particular praise from the judges.

Jai Redman is creative director of artists’ collective and design studio UHC (Ultimate Holding Company). UHC first came to attention thanks to the 2003 project This Is Camp X-Ray. Here, UHC installed a fully operational, life-size replica of the US internment camp at Guantanamo Bay – in Hulme. Fusing Redman’s interests in politics, direct action and contemporary art, This Is Camp X-Ray was followed up by other projects including the Thin Veneer of Democracy, a 16-foot table whose surface is decorated with a ‘power map’ of Manchester’s corporate and political movers and shakers. Redman’s role as director of UHC particularly impressed the judges.

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Let the judging commence

That’s it – time’s up. The competition for this year’s Best of Manchester Awards closed at Midnight on Monday. All that art, imagery, music, composition, photography, design and fashion is now winging its way to the judges. They’ll take a broad look at the entries prior to the judging sessions at Urbis next week and we have a feeling they’re going to be busy: the number of entries is up by 65% on last year’s competition (phew).

We’ve had a sneaky peek at what’s been entered and, to be honest, we’re pretty impressed by what we’ve seen. What we’ve ended up with is a very mixed bag, but in the best possible way. In music, for example, there’s everything from contemporary classical composition to hip-hop, jazz, heavy metal – and a fair few entries that defy categorisation. There are plenty of intelligent, clever, innovative and witty entries, and, it has to be said, a couple of downright hilarious ones (we’re assuming that’s intentional…).

And that’s the whole point of the Best of Manchester: it’s all about work that doesn’t fit neatly into boxes (oooh, we almost said ‘work that thinks outside the box’ but that would be a terrible thing to say outside of a corporate team building event). Best of Manchester is a competition that has no rules and regulations. And our judges, who are about to roll their sleeves up and start shortlisting, are only really expecting the unexpected.

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And all the stars shone brightly in the night sky…

The word is hitting the streets (well, our flyers and posters are, at any rate), the website it live and, wait for it, we’ve just had our very first entry.

Yes, the Best of Manchester 2008 is now open for entries.

So who, we hear you ask, will be judging our creative work? We’ve lined up three exceptional panels of judges for this year’s competition (one for each category) and, of course, the whole shebang is being overseen by Manchester’s very own Creative Director, Peter Saville.

ART

Looking for examples of creative work across the visual arts, from illustration, graphic design and photography to painting, sculpture, street art and mixed media work are:

Nick Crowe, a practising artist who splits his time between Manchester and Berlin and who has exhibited work in both solo and group shows all over the word. Joining Nick is international curator and gallerist CeriHand , whose new international contemporary art gallery, the Ceri Hand Gallery, opens in Liverpool in July 2008. Nick Johnson brings his architectural, built environment and visual arts experience to the panel. Finally, exhibition organiser, practising artist and Director of Manchester’s Castlefield Gallery, Kwong Lee, completes the line-up for the arts panel.

MUSIC

Looking for examples of creative work across music, from up-and-coming guitar-based bands and live acts to electronic music, promotion and sound art are:

Luke Bainbridge, deputy editor of the Observer Music Monthly. Joining Luke is the composer and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios at the University of Manchester, David Berezan. Justin Crawford, as one half of international DJ act The Unabombers and the band Elektrons, brings his DJ, promotion and production experience to the panel. Finally, Caroline Elleray, Head of A&R at Universal Music Publishing, joins the broadcaster and music journalist Miranda Sawyer and Tim Thomas, a producer, engineer, musician and songwriter who represents Manchester’s Blueprint Studios. Phew…

FASHION

Looking for examples of innovation in fashion, styling and fashion photography are:

Claire Lomax, co-founder of international style magazine, Flux. Joining Claire is Jessica Lowe of Harvey Nichols Manchester. David Mallon will be bringing his fashion experience as the brains behind international fashion labels Ringspun and Elvis Jesus, as well as new fashion store The General Store, to the panel. Finally, Alison Welsh, menswear designer, design consultant and Programme Leader and for the BA (Hons) Fashion at Manchester Metropolitan University completes the line-up for the fashion panel.

So what are you waiting for? Find out more about our judges here, find out what they’re looking for in the entrants’ work here – and enter your creative loveliness here.

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The Best of Manchester comes but once a year…

The Best of Manchester is back. The annual competition that celebrates innovation in music, fashion and art is gearing up for its second year. Judged by a panel of industry experts, Best of Manchester spotlights the work of Manchester’s creative professionals. There is no age limit, no hype and no rules: just the best creative thinking by the best creatives working in Manchester today.

Anyone working within music, art (including graphic design) and fashion – and who lives or works in Manchester – can enter. The prize? Apart from the chance to get their work seen by industry leaders, winners receive long-term professional development, a one-off cash prize and an exhibition of their work at Urbis.

Last year’s Best of Manchester celebrated the cutting-edge creativity for which Manchester has long been known, from a musical based on the life of artist Jackson Pollock to Art Deco-inspired commercial design. The three categories are deliberately broad, designed to encourage entries that blur boundaries, mix disciplines and are genuinely innovative.

‘The competition is very simple,’ said Peter Saville, who’s leading the awards. ‘It’s a showcase of ideas. Manchester is full of people coming up with great concepts but those people aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. The Best of Manchester is a chance to uncover the ideas of a city known for its creative thinking.’

‘There are plenty of competitions out there for young people,’ confirmed Urbis Chief Executive, Vaughan Allen. ‘But there’s very little for those who’ve spent years grafting at the coalface of the creative industries. It’s easy to champion young people, and easier still to celebrate it when they make it big. But what about those left in the middle? The Best of Manchester is a chance for Manchester to support its creative professionals when they need it most – when they’re on the verge of making it to the next level of their career.’

The competition opens on 12 May. Entry to the competition is via the Urbis website. Details of how to enter will be announced here in a few weeks’ time.

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