2024 Wrapped
Looking back on 2024, it’s impossible not to feel a mix of pride and gratitude for everything this year has brought us at MAYK. From joyful, celebratory moments to challenges that pushed us to grow and change, it’s been a year full of creativity, connection, and learning.
So as we prepare to wrap up the year and take a festive break, we thought it might be nice to look back on the year that’s just been and raise a glass to all the magic we’ve created together, with you, our audience.
Testing, making, nurturing
The year began, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in residency with our friends at FABRIC in Nottingham, where Jo Bannon began work on the third part of the epic Blind Magic trilogy – a solo live performance called The Dirty Work. This was early-stage development, and now almost a year on, we’re moving into full production in the new year, with an incredible creative team. We’ll announce full tour details early in the New Year so keep an eye out.
And to close the year we have just been in residency with the brilliant Level Centre which is supporting the early stages of Raquel Mesequer’s new live piece Proper Time. Raquel and her collaborators returned with beautiful stories, melodies, first sketches, and inspiration. We’ll be developing this work across 2025.
Running throughout the year, the I Like It. What Is It? artists Luca Rutherford, Malik Nashad-Sharpe, Malaika Kegode & Handina Dutiro, and Kit Hall have all been in development with their extraordinary ideas both in and out of the MAYKING Space at various points, making, dreaming, and creating. We’ve also been assembling a group of artists to join us on the second stage of Confluence, our slowly unfolding residency project exploring the changing city. We’ll be announcing those artists early in the New Year.
The MAYKING Space has had its liveliest year ever, with artists from all over Bristol and beyond using the space to develop and rehearse new live work of all kinds. We are very proud of the depth and diversity of practice here and look forward to sharing more insights and ‘backstage’ news with you from January.
Proper Time R&D at Level Centre
Luca Rutherford, Jo Fong and Ira Brand in the MAYKING Space
Malaika Kegode & Handina Dutiro in the MAYKING Space
Travelling, connecting, meeting
International collaboration has always been at the heart of our work. This year, we visited Cork with artists Marley Small, Aish Humphreys, and Clara Potter-Sweet as part of our Tales of Two Cities programme with Cork Everyman, Cork Midsummer Festival, and Bristol Old Vic. We attended festivals in Montreal and Shanghai, we joined the IETM Caravan in Ljublana, and we took Jo Bannon’s Sleight of Hand to Theaterformen in Germany.
Tales of Two Cities in Cork
Jo Bannon’s Passing at Theaterformen in Braunschweig
FTA Festival in Montreal
Gathering, sharing, celebrating
2024 was a Mayfest year. And what a Mayfest it was. We welcomed thousands of you to shows and events across the city for 10 days heart bursting days of incredible live performance. You rested in hammocks, you watched an arch made of ice slowly melt on the harbourside, you played seven hours of a video game about donkeys, you gathered, danced, reflected, and celebrated the richness of the work shared with us by artists from around the world. How important it is to keep telling these stories.
And just last week, we filled the Pulp Room Gallery at St Anne’s House with crafting, play, and soft restfulness with 378,432,000,000 Seconds of Exposure, Kitchen Table Photo Club’s exhibition, guided by Esther May Campbell, as part of Confluence.
t l k: Hypnagogia for Holocene as part of Confluence at St Anne’s House
Malik Nashad-Sharpe’s Goner at The Mount Without as part of Mayfest 2024
Tanya El-Khoury’s Memory of Birds in St George’s Park as part of Mayfest 2024
Learning, reflecting, thinking
Alongside all of this, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes on some things that support our public programme and develop new talent. We offered three placements to early-career producers via the University of Bristol and Creative Access, we launched our Environmental Policy, we welcomed a new Chair of our board, Bristol’s very own Jesse Jones (Artistic Director of Royal and Derngate Theatre), and we tested some new ways of working with communities, including our Tea and Stories project with over-65s in St Anne’s.
Tea and Stories at St Anne’s House
MAYK’s new Environment Policy
Athena Diamond, one of our Mayfest 2024 placements
The year in numbers
Our work took us to four countries – China, Germany, Canada and Ireland
We welcomed 31 artists and companies into the MAYKING Space
We served 700 pints of Mayfest Pale, thanks to our partnership with the lovely folk at Good Chemistry
We used 75m of pink fabric to create Jo Bannon’s Sleight of Hand
We supported over 25 artists through producing, developing, and commissioning
We welcomed just under 4000 audience members to Mayfest 2024
A quarter of Mayfest’s audience were new to the festival this year
Across Mayfest 2024, we presented 14 shows, 153 individual presentations and involved 118 participants
“Thank you for this beautiful experience. So precious, so inspiring. I will remember it for the rest of my life”
We urgently need your support
The climate for making art at the moment is deeply challenging. Rising costs, stiff competition for funding, and a community that is still reeling from the dual impacts of Covid-19 and the following costs of living crisis have meant that many arts organisations, including MAYK, are struggling.
Earlier this year we announced that we wouldn’t be delivering Mayfest in 2026. We made this decision so that we could focus our energy on stablising the future of the organisation. And to do that, we urgently need your support.
If you’ve experienced our work this year, or even if you couldn’t join us in person, please consider donating to our fundraising campaign. We’ve been blown away by the support of our community so far, but we have a long way to go to raise the £30,000 we need by the end of March. If you can help, either by becoming a MAYK Friend and giving each month, or by making a one-off donation, click the button below. Thank you.