Wigan Wow Festival 2010

The Wigan One World Festival is an exciting annual festival organised by Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust and featuring diverse music, dance and drama. This year Wigan One World brought thirty groups from over twenty countries to Wigan sharing a rich mix of cultures.

This year, as CAN was asked to produce an Exodus Live stage at the festival to showcase the music & talents of Greater Manchester’s diverse refugee communities. The Exodus Live stage featured 6 musical acts including the Beating Wing Orchestra, Testimony and Heritage Survival. The bands certainly brought a new flavour to Wigan One World and went down well with local audiences.

For more information download a PDF copy of the Wigan Wow Festival brochure

Exodus Live Winter 2009

Download a copy of the flyer here

Exodus Live Winter 2009

Thurs 10 Dec, 7pm-11pm
Band on the Wall, 25 Swan Street, Northern Quarter M4 5JZ

Music with roots in Africa - Cameroon, Zimbabwe and DR Congo - sets the scene for an extraordinary night of live world music.

Community Arts North West presents Exodus Live at Band on the Wall, a unique showcase celebrating the music and talents of Greater Manchester’s diverse refugee communities. The one night only event promises to be an electrifying evening of music with global influences.

The line up includes Beating Wing Orchestra, Manchester’s unique global ensemble, who will perform their first gig since sell-out performances at the Manchester International Festival earlier in the year. Featuring musicians from Kurdistan, Cameroon, Bangladesh and Brazil, Beating Wing performed its debut performance in 2007 to huge critical acclaim and has since received many five star reviews.

Beating Wing is joined by female gospel band Testimony, whose mesmerizing blend of African classical grooves and contemporary American gospel always gets the crowd moving.

Also on stage is Heritage Survival, an Afro-jazz group that fuses guitars with traditional Zimbabwean instruments to create a combination of cool jazz melodies and reggae beats.

Other highlights include West African rhythms from seven piece ensemble Alafia and hip-hop, rap and R&B group Educated Thugz.

Ticket prices: £5, £3 concessions.
Free for asylum seekers on the door.

BOOK TODAY! Call 08452 500 500 or visit www.bandonthewall.org

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Exodus Live Spring 2009

Download a copy of the flyer here

Exodus Launch Event Sells Out

To celebrate the launch of the next phase of the Exodus Greater Manchester Refugee Arts programme (April 2008 - March 2011) Community Arts North West presented a special Exodus Live Summer 2008 event at Contact Theatre on Friday 20th June, from 6pm-12midnight. The event sold out, with over 500 people attending.

The evening featured an official launch with speeches from Cilla Baynes (Director, CAN), Michael Eakin (Chief Executive, Arts Council England, North West), Alan Amin (Director, Kurdish Creative Film Centre) and Tim Hilton (Area Deputy Manager, Refugee Action). Then 8 bands and poets took to the stage for an evening of music & dancing.

The performance started with spoken word from Kurdish poet, Choman Hardi. Kokoriko played their own brand of Afro-jazz; Britannia Rumba performed a stunning set of Congolese Rumba; Testimony brought irresistible rhythms of Congolese dance music, blended with Cameroonian R&B and South African jazz, with a sanctified message of salvation. Behar played passionate, soulful and poetic music; Asian Music Talent performed traditional Asian sounds; Educated Thugz played their own brand of hip-hop; and Ya Freddy performed his own pop songs.