Flatpack Projects Competitors

The Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest arts centre and the heart of London’s cultural life. We exist to present great cultural experiences that bring people together and we achieve this by providing the space for artists to create and present their best work and by creating a place where as many people as possible can come together to experience bold, unusual and eye-opening work. We want to take people out of the everyday, every day. Occupying a prominent riverside location that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames, our site has an extraordinary creative and architectural history stretching back to the 1951 Festival of Britain. The Southbank Centre is made up of the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery as well as being home to the National Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection. It is also home to six Resident Orchestras (Aurora Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Philharmonia Orchestra).

More than half a million fans attend the festivals we own and co-produce each year. They do so because they share our passion for festivals. Festivals are in our blood and we are proud to provide the heartbeat of the summer. Festival Republic is the UK’s leading festival and event promoter, and is extremely proud to be the team behind festivals including the greatest live show on the planet, Reading & Leeds Festivals; Latitude, the critically acclaimed multi-arts festival; and overseas events Electric Picnic, Berlin Festival and Lollapalooza Berlin. Formed in 1982 under the name Mean Fiddler, the company largely created the modern music festival market in the UK, taking shared ownership of Reading Festival in 1989 and producing numerous other events including the Fleadh and Phoenix festivals, Creamfields and Homelands. From 2001 until June 2012 Melvin Benn, Managing Director of Festival Republic, also held the licence and operational control of Glastonbury Festival. In 2007 the Mean Fiddler name and venues were sold, with the full festival portfolio remaining under the new name of Festival Republic. Since then the company has gone from strength to strength, producing an impressive portfolio of live events in the UK and overseas, and opening an office in Dublin in 2013.

Manchester International Festival (MIF) is the world’s first festival of original, new work and special events, staged every two years in Manchester, UK. MIF launched in 2007 as an artist-led festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, visual arts and popular culture. MIF has commissioned, produced and presented world premieres by artists including Björk, Steve McQueen, Robert Wilson, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Jeremy Deller, Wayne McGregor, Maxine Peake, Boris Charmatz, The xx, Zaha Hadid Architects, Thomas Ostermeier, Damon Albarn, Punchdrunk, Elbow and Marina Abramović. MIF brings together world-renowned artists from different art forms and backgrounds to create dynamic, innovative and forward-thinking new work, staged in venues across Greater Manchester – from theatres, galleries and concert halls to railway depots, churches and car parks. MIF works closely with venues, festivals and other cultural organisations globally, whose financial and creative input helps to make many of these projects possible and ensures that work made at MIF goes on to be seen around the world. The Festival also works widely within Manchester with a new initiative called My Festival – a community of creative people from all backgrounds, ages and corners of the city who are forging closer connections with MIF. MIF’s Artistic Director and CEO is John McGrath, previously the Founding Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales. In 2017, MIF was confirmed as the operator of The Factory, a new £110 million cultural centre in Manchester due to open in 2020. MIF is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee.