When Aviva Studios opened in 2023, not everyone knew what to make of it. Was it a theatre? A music venue? A gallery?
For John McGrath, chief executive and artistic director of Factory International, that uncertainty wasn’t a problem to solve, it was the point.
“The phrase ‘We do things differently here’ is overused in Manchester. But why shouldn’t we do things differently when we’re building a new venue?” he asks.
“And if that means that it takes a little bit of time for people to really understand what that different is for, why it’s different, then fine. Because that’s what it takes when you do something new. If everybody recognises it right away and gets it, it is because it’s familiar. And I don’t think it’s our job to be familiar.”
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Ten years after first joining Factory International, and more than two since Aviva Studios first opened its doors, he makes it clear he has no interest in the venue settling into something safe.
From artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s first major exhibition in the North to intimate shows from Lily Allen and an English National Opera staging of Angel’s Bone, the 2026 programme signals scale and confidence. But the real measure of success was never just about big names, it was about what both Factory International and its new home, Aviva Studios, does for Manchester.
Built for the city, not the critics
McGrath traces that thinking back to 2015, when he began working with the late Sir Howard Bernstein on the project, the long-serving chief executive of Manchester City Council.
“He was very much a driving force behind the project,” he explains. “When we were first developing ideas for the building, we sat down and asked how we would measure the success of both the project and this new building.”
But Bernstein wasn’t preoccupied about the opinions of critics or whether those at The Guardian approved of an exhibition: “He was interested in what it does for the city,” he says.
They settled on two measures of success: strengthening Manchester’s international reputation as a “world centre for culture”, and creating impact through jobs and employment in the city.
A decade on, he believes that’s exactly what both Factory International and its permanent home of Aviva Studios is starting to achieve.
“We produce and export more work internationally than any other cultural organisation in the UK. It’s a huge part of what we do and we’re presenting work all around the world. 1.8 million people have seen work in 35 different countries – none of the big national companies are doing that,” he says.
“We’re also inviting artists of the scale of Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic to Manchester – that involves a lot of going out to meet and find those artists and bring them back here.”
Opening the pipeline
But while those globally renowned names tend to dominate the headlines, Factory International’s mission seems to be as much about supporting homegrown talent as it is drawing international stars to the city too.
Factory Academy, launched in 2018, is an initiative designed to open up pathways into creative careers, particularly for those from underrepresented backgrounds.
It spans everything from programmes in backstage roles and production to management, marketing, communications and education.
“Factory Academy is central to the long-term success of Factory International,” he explains. “We’re really keen to see more employment, not just amongst artists, but in the wider sector – that’s why we have Factory Academy that really invests in training people to get jobs in the creative industries.”
That ambition feels particularly urgent following findings from a recent ‘Class Ceiling’ report, led by Nazir Afzal, the chancellor of the University of Manchester, which highlighted how access to the creative industries remains unequal.
“We want people in Manchester to get that employment. So those two areas: international reputation and the direct impact on jobs and employment in the city, in some ways, were the guiding light of the project, and Factory Academy is obviously at the heart of how we deliver the second of those.
“I would say it’s also starting to have an impact on our international reputation as well. We’re getting international visitors coming here and coming to Manchester also to find out about Factory Academy. So the two things are working hand in hand.”
And that next generation is already being given space to experiment. The Warehouse space inside Aviva Studios has been temporarily transformed into a pub for UTOPIA, an installation by artist Trackie McLeod, created alongside Factory International’s Young Curators programme.
By day, visitors can order pints from the artist himself. By night, it becomes a live music venue, in what’s been described as a playful but important exploration of class, nostalgia, gentrification and the changing landscapes of Manchester and Glasgow, drawn from McLeod’s own experiences of the working men’s clubs he grew up in.
And that’s how Factory International is aiming to strike a balance between those global artists and supporting emerging, local creatives. Although programming decisions are filtered through a core curatorial team, the organisation also has community panels and the Young Curators programme.
“One of the projects that I really love is our Young Curators programme. Our young curators are all young people under 30 in the creative scene in Manchester, who have spent the last year and a half working with us on what it takes to make a programme and fill the space.”
Proving the building
When Aviva Studios first opened with Danny Boyle’s immersive recreation of The Matrix, the reaction was, to be fair, mixed. Some critics took aim at the venue’s appearance while others were more concerned about its identity, questioning what the £210m venue was actually for.
But McGrath doesn’t wince at those criticisms.
“We always found amongst the younger generation that there was a real embrace and understanding of the space,” he explains. “Our audiences probably do track younger than a lot of cultural institutions. And I think that’s partly to do with how younger people are less concerned with, is it a theatre, a music venue or an exhibition space. They were much more excited about what’s on.”
If there was a tipping point, he suggests it came with projects that simply couldn’t have happened elsewhere last year: an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet scored to Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, or Marina Abramovic’s four-hour immersive Balkan Erotic Epic taking over the entire building.
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“You could say the Marina Abramovic show is niche, but it wasn’t. It was packed out every night with the widest range of people. That’s when people started saying: ‘We get it now’. There’s a kind of work we can make here that can’t be made anywhere else in the UK – sometimes anywhere in the world.”
“People now see that. We are an engine, we are a factory for that kind of work.”
But he admits that establishing the venue in the commercial music market proved harder, taking time for touring musicians to experience the acoustics of the venue themselves.
“When you open a building, people will talk a lot about how it looks but they rarely talk about how it sounds. The fact we’ve arguably got one of the best acoustic spaces in Europe, is a real thing to be proud of in Manchester.”
He admits another challenge in those earlier days, as the surrounding St John’s neighbourhood remained a building site for longer than he’d hoped.
“You are seeing that transformation now, but I’d still say there’s work to do in terms of how the St John’s neighborhood grows. I think over time it will feel like a much more central area of the city. At the moment, it still feels like it’s on the edge.”
What he does think has been apparent from day one though is the “excitement” that the space generates with artists as he recalls how Ai Weiwei was enticed by the “drama” of the Warehouse for his upcoming show.
“That didn’t take time to establish and that remains a core strength for us. It’s really ultimately what we’re here to do.”
‘We champion freedom of speech’
Factory International grew out of the Manchester International Festival, which has taken over the city every two years since 2007.
But during last year’s festival, a handful of musicians withdrew from their Festival Square performances to ‘boycott’ the festival over its sponsorship links and alleged ties with an Israeli defence company.
He is more than happy to chat about it and is clear on two points: no commissioned artists pulled out, and the festival remains a platform for debate.
“The artists where we did have a relationship, including local young artists, we were able to sit down with them and look at what is a complex situation. Situations change and develop, and you’ve got to be thoughtful about how you respond to them,” he explains.
“One of the things that we really championed during that festival, that we were very proud of, was freedom of speech. The artists who came to the festival and were on other stages were given an opportunity to say what they wanted to say about the situation. That was way more productive than people choosing not to appear, because if you don’t appear, then you don’t get to say anything.”
He sets out how engagement, including hosting Palestinian artists and having discussions around global conflicts, is more productive than “simply withdrawing”.
“We’re really positive going forward that this won’t be an issue. However, that won’t mean that we stop having difficult conversations. In fact, we’re leaning into that and going: ‘No, this needs to be a space where people can come and talk about the difficult stuff.’ If we ignore what’s going on in the world, then we’re not doing our job as our arts and culture organisation.”
What comes next
Behind the scenes, planning is already underway for 2027’s Manchester International Festival and Factory International is also planning a “big project” with English National Opera the same year.
But the long-term ambition remains rooted in the same two ideas set out a decade ago: global reach and local impact. He also hopes that in the coming years, creatives emerging from Factory Academy will move into senior roles not just within the organisation, but across the city’s cultural and media organisations.
“I think that we have a contribution to make around the long-term vision for the city as a sustainable city, as a city that is more equal, has better standards of living for everybody. And I think culture and a big cultural organisation can be part of that,” he explains.
“We do see creative industries as a real growth sector in the region. We need to make sure that people who live here benefit from that, and therefore they’ve got the training that they need to get the jobs.”
As for Aviva Studios, he wants it to be renowned as a central hub in the city and an “exciting location” for visitors.
“That’s something that I really feel that we’ll see develop increasingly over the coming years. Whether it’s a stadium artist doing intimate shows or visual artists doing scale, I think you’re seeing unique things here.”
