Lost & Found

In 2010-2011, the original members of Re:Con, Contact’s Young Programming and Producing Team - Phil Brankin, Alex Browning, Jennifer Gaskell and Rachel Moorhouse - were given the opportunity to directly shape Contact’s programme and develop their professional practice. At the culmination of this period, they took the tools and training received to produce their own festival, Lost & Found.

Lost & Found is a festival of pop-up performance and impromptu art, which asks the question of who theatre and art belongs to.  Testing the game of pied piper by putting performances on in unlikely but very public places, Lost & Found is held in non-arts venues and public spaces across Manchester before bringing audiences back to Contact.  For 2011, it featured a moving theatre on a Metrolink Tram, live art in the Arndale, al fresco opera, bicycle-powered cinemas at the Bridgewater Hall Plaza, dance in Piccadilly Gardens and much more.  

Over 100 artists were involved in the first festival in 2011:

• Shams Theatre Co (Reykjavik)
• Baba Israel, Maxwell Golden and Martin Visceral (Country Boy’s Struggle)
• Mixed Movement
• ArtYarn
• Larkin’ About
• Elemental Opera
• Fergus Evans
• Art with a Heart
• Façade Theatre Co
• Laura Purling
• PoWWow Pedal Power
• Butcher the Bar
• Akemi Arts
• Marcus Lilley
• Claire Mooney
• ..and many more!

Lost & Found Festival 2011 was supported by Metrolink, Ideas Tap, PoWWow Pedal Power, O2 Think Big, HMV and Nexus Art Café.