Manipulate Festival, Edinburgh’s international festival of animated film, puppetry, and visual theatre, returns for its 17th edition in February 2024, marking the start of the 40th year of Manipulate Arts, formerly Puppet Animation Scotland. Manipulate Festival will once more celebrate international and homegrown work that tells stories primarily through imagery instead of text or breathes life into the inanimate, crossing borders and welcoming audiences of all backgrounds into the fold.
The 2024 Festival will take place in venues across the city of Edinburgh – with live performance, screenings, and workshops taking place in venues including the Traverse Theatre, Festival Theatre, Fruitmarket, Summerall, WHALE Arts, The French Institute and Dancebase, and reaching into audiences’ homes with its online programme. This year’s programme has been supported by three associate programmers: Natasha Ruwona, Emily Nicholl and Holly Summerson. With artist support and development a huge part of Manipulate Arts’ work, the Festival is delighted to welcome an international exchange with artists from Finland, Norway, Belgium and Germany.
Audiences will discover an acrobatic Thomas Hardy adaptation and a farcical robotic dinner service; party with an existential pickle; contemplate the end of our world; witness dancers inside a giant, mesmerising video cube; take a psychedelic journey through a faraway planet ruled by blue giants; and much more, across a diverse and exciting range of visual artforms. We will welcome leading UK artists like Ockham’s Razor, Tortoise in a Nutshell, Al Seed and Ad Infinitum alongside visiting international companies including Compagnie à, Kwaad Bloed, Compagnie Bakélite and Sofie Krog Teater.
Manipulate Festival 2024 interrogates the many ways in which we relate to the world around us, and explores visions of the future – what is in store for us globally and as individuals, our relationship to the climate that surrounds us, how technology can hinder and help us, and how we form our identity in relation to culture.
The festival will run from Thursday 1 – Sunday 11 February, presenting an exciting and varied programme of live performances; film screenings; discussions; workshops and events. Thanks to funding from Film Hub Scotland, there is a significantly expanded film programme for 2024, including the Scottish debut of One Bum Cinema Club, which will pop up around the city to welcome audiences into a cinema screening for one, with 3 programmes of accessible animated film waiting for the people of Edinburgh to discover them.
Manipulate Arts Artistic Director and CEO Dawn Taylor said: “The magical thing about the artforms at the heart of Manipulate Festival is their endless potential for innovation, and audiences can expect some exciting new approaches to puppetry and visual theatre this year unlike anything they’ve seen before. Our animation programme is the biggest it has ever been, creating a real moment of celebration for animation in Scotland. The range and calibre of presented artists, alongside the contributions of our artist associate programmers, have really worked to elevate this year’s programme.
Artists and creative organisations are struggling more than ever in this financial climate – but as ever our community of artists has responded to these challenges with ingenuity and creativity, making for a dynamic programme in the 40th anniversary year for Manipulate Arts.”
Check out our full programme for the 2024 Festival.