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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Turner Prize winner joins Saville to judge BOMA 09

We admit it: we’re as giddy as kippers at the fact that we have just confirmed our line-up of 24 judges for this year’s Best of Manchester Awards.

And if we do say so ourselves, it’s a bloody good line-up. Entrants to this year’s awards (which opens for entries next week) will have to impress:

ART
Looking for original and imaginative work across the spectrum of visual arts, from illustration, graphic design and photography to painting, sculpture, street art and mixed media work will be: Rob Carney, Editor of Computer Arts magazine; Kate Day, Director of Manchester Craft & Design Centre; Jeremy Deller, the British artist who was awarded the Turner Prize in 2004; Nick Johnson, Deputy Chief Executive of Urban Splash; Kwong Lee, Director of Manchester’s Castlefield Gallery; Tim Marlow, Director of Exhibitions at White Cube in London; Aileen McEvoy, Interim Executive Director of Arts Council England, North West; Peter Saville (pictured), the seminal graphic designer and Manchester’s own Creative Director; and the Burnley-born painter, Liam Spencer.

MUSIC
Looking for original and imaginative work throughout the field music, from up-and-coming guitar-based bands and live acts to electronic music and sound art, (including performers, producers and promoters) are: Luke Bainbridge, Deputy Editor of the Observer Music Monthly; Justin Crawford, DJ, producer and Director of Electriks Ltd.; Caroline Elleray, Head of A&R at Universal Music Publishing; Yvette Livesey (pictured), Chief Executive of In The City; Dan Parrott, Senior Music Producer at Channel M Television; writer and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer; DJ Semtex of BBC Radio 1Xtra; and Tim Thomas, producer, engineer, musician and songwriter and Director of Blueprint Studios.

FASHION
Looking for original and imaginative work in fashion, styling and fashion photography are: Flic Everett, the journalist, broadcaster and owner of fashion boutique, Rags to Bitches (winner of our very own 2008 Best of Manchester Fashion award); Wayne Hemingway (pictured), former head of label Red or Dead; Claire Lomax, Co-Founder of Flux Magazine; Jessica Lowe, Press & Marketing Manager for Harvey Nichols Manchester; David Mallon, the head of labels Elvis Jesus, Ringspun and high fashion retail outlet, The General Store; Karen Nicol, a couture embroidery and mixed media textile designer and visiting professor at the Royal College of Art; and Alison Welsh, menswear designer, design consultant and Programme Leader and for the BA (Hons) Fashion at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The awards open for entries next Monday (16 Feb). Keep watching for details.

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Beat the crunch – get creative with your clobber

Ah, sweet January: that long month whose only highlights are maxed out credit cards, dark days and, new for this year, a recession. Luckily for you, our 2008 Fashion Award winners, Rags to Bitches, are offering a credit crunch-defying event later this month.

RTB are running a customising workshop at Urbis on Sunday 18 January. Showing you how to get to grips with your sewing machine (or just a needle and thread), the workshop teaches some clever techniques for updating old clothes or adjusting vintage threads. And, best of all, it’s completely free and accompanied by the usual RTB Sunday teas, live music and honest-to-goodness fun.

Rags to Bitches customising workshop. Sunday 18 January, The Social, Urbis, 2-4pm, free. Email info at rags-to-bitches dot co dot uk for more details.

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Vintage and vinyl: upcoming shenanigans at The Social

Rags to Bitches, the rather lovely vintage boutique in the Northern Quarter, is hosting a series of parties at Urbis this winter.

Things kick off (possibly literally) on Sunday 14 December with an afternoon of tea, cakes, vintage clobber and rare vinyl. It’s a chance to revisit the boutique’s ‘Dansette Disco’ parties (usually hosted in the Tib Street store, often ending in table-top dancing, though owners Flic and Simon have vowed not to let things get quite so out of hand at Urbis). 1-5pm, free and possibly the best retail experience you’ll get in the city this festive season.

More parties are planned throughout the winter. The party on 21 December features an opera singer; the one on 11 January is a clothes-swap party, which is a great excuse to off-load all those ill-fitting sale bargains and that lurid knitted Christmas jumper Granny made. And, finally, on 18 January, RTB will be reprising their customising workshop, which was a sell-out success at Manchester in Fashion.

And if you’re wondering what all this has to do with The Best of Manchester Awards, have you not been paying attention? Rags to Bitches won the 2008 Fashion Award…

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Winners announced!

And finally, the Best of Manchester Awards 2008 winners were announced live at an exclusive awards ceremony held at Urbis on 7 August, with the awards themselves handed out by Peter Saville, Claire Lomax (of Flux Magazine) and ex-City Life writer (and now deputy editor of The Observer Music Monthly), Luke Bainbridge.

The winner of the Best of Manchester Music Award 2008 is Richard Cheetham. 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.

The winner of the Best of Manchester Fashion Awards 2008 is Simon Buckley. 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.

The winner of the Best of Manchester Art Awards 2008 is Naomi Kashiwagi. 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.

Each winner receives a £2000 cash prize, as well as a professional development package drawn up in consultation with the Best of Manchester judges that will boost their business or career.

The work of all the three winners is being shown as part of the Best of Manchester exhibition at Urbis, which runs from today until 28 September 2008.

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