The Factory Manchester is recruiting a project director to lead the ambitious scheme to create a £110m permanent home for the biennial Manchester International Festival. Due to open in 2019 in a building designed by Rem Koolhaas’s OMA practice, the project is the leading architect’s first major UK commission.
Maria Balshaw, the director of the city’s Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester City Galleries, who is the “steering person” on the project, says The Factory Manchester will be a “multi-artform centre, which can host large-scale exhibitions”. She compares the central performance space to the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in London, “but the key is that The Factory will be super-flexible. It can be one large space or divided into eight small units, for instance.”
The project director will be on a salary of up to £140,000, on a par with the directors of some London-based national museums—and more than the £125,000 that the outgoing director of Tate Modern, Chris Dercon, was paid from 2014 to 2015.
The new hub will form part of the new St John’s neighbourhood, to be built on the site of the former Granada TV studios in the city centre. Manchester City Council will develop the scheme in partnership with the property investment company Allied London.
The UK government has pledged £78m towards the £110m cost of the project. “Manchester City Council will develop the rest of the funding package, which will include third-party support such as public subscription and donations,” a spokesman says. Land and property sales will also help generate capital funding.
Dave Moutrey, the director and chief executive of Manchester’s Home arts complex, says that discussions are under way about future collaborations with The Factory, which “brings significant capacity to the region and helps in the rebalancing of the UK’s cultural infrastructure.”
