Birthed from Rain and River is a sonic mosaic of voices, spoken and sung, individual and collective, unfolding from one simple question: what makes a queer home?
Combining live and prerecorded sound, the work has grown from conversations and workshops with queer people in Manchester and Oulu, Finland. Choral songs co-created by residents in each city, solo songs inspired by interviews, and rich tapestries of spoken word come together in different forms across both cities.
This sonic jigsaw invites listeners into different perspectives on the queer experience, from the deeply personal and individual to the universal. Where do you find your queer home?
Michael Betteridge is a composer and conductor known for bold, story-driven work across opera, orchestral, and choral music. His music has also been performed internationally across Europe, North America, and beyond.
And secondly, Building the Auntiverse by afshan d’souza-lodhi.
The Auntiverse invites you to step into a playful, powerful and thought-provoking performative walk through North Manchester, one that places the voices, wisdom and visions of aunties at its centre, and invites you to experience this city through their eyes.
Along the way, you’ll join an ever-growing commune of aunties: sharing stories, encountering poetry and performance, and imagining what the world could look like if it were shaped by the women so often left out of imagining our futures.
Because aunties have always known how to build worlds from very little.
Long before sustainability became a buzzword, aunties were reusing, repairing, composting, sharing, feeding families from scraps, caring for communities and making things work against all odds. This walk celebrates the women who have crossed borders, rebuilt homes, raised children, organised protests, cooked meals, carried histories and created futures, often all at once.
Their stories didn’t make it into the history books, but the future is not yet written.
Whether you are an aunty, have an aunty, or simply love aunties, welcome. The Auntiverse is yours.
afshan d’souza-lodhi is a writer, activist and organiser whose award-winning poetry and scripts have been performed and translated internationally.