Commission Enquiries

For Art in Manufacturing, the Festival’s headline commissioning programme, we select artists in a number of ways:

– We might invite artists/makers to send us proposals or to meet with us as a result of our own research.

– We also spend time looking through applications received from previous open calls or introductions received through email.

– Sometimes we release new open calls for specific opportunities. This often depends on which manufacturers are able to host a residency in a given year.

Where possible, the manufacturer also has input in the artist or discipline selected, and this influences the approach. If we don’t currently have any open opportunities on our news page, please feel free to share your practice with us via email. Sometimes it may take a bit of time for us to get back to you as we receive lots of emails and communications of this nature, but we welcome you introducing yourselves to us this way.

If you subscribe to our newsletter you will always receive new open calls in your inbox.

Get in touch about opportunities

Factory Enquiries

We champion manufacturing –  Blackburn with Darwen has a much larger proportion of the population working in making and manufacturing than the rest of the UK. We’re always interested in connecting with manufacturers in the North and further afield, particularly through our headline commissioning programme, Art in Manufacturing. If you’d like to have a chat with us, please drop us an email, and we’ll arrange a conversation.

Speak to us about collaborations

Press Enquiries

High quality storytelling has helped us achieve international press coverage and is an essential part of the National Festival of Making and Art in Manufacturing’s intention – we want to tell stories. It’s incredibly important that the work created here in Lancashire reaches as wide an audience as possible.

For Media and PR enquiries:

For media enquiries, in the first instance, please contact Simon Webbon: simon@festivalofmaking.co.uk

Our press agency, Animo PR, can be contacted at anita@animopr.co.uk and anys@animopr.co.uk