Yesterday we saw the culmination of the fourth Umbro Industries with the staging of a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style final at Dale Street, which resulted in an unprecedented three projects gaining funding to develop and progress their projects. Up for grabs was funding to the sound of £10,000, awarded quarterly to support local creatives in realising their finest ideas.

Competition to get to the final was intense, with plenty of entries putting forward plans across a broad spectrum of arts in the Greater Manchester community.
Four ideas were chosen from those put forward and invited to present their ideas to a panel of well-known locals from the creative scene, there to decide using their expertise how to best allocate the grant. The proposals that emerged successful were Krysko and Kashiwagi, Streets Above and TOURIST magazine.

Krysko and Kashiwagi were awarded £6,500, which will go towards an exciting offshoot of an event they are hosting as part of The Manchester Weekender. The duo are set to perform in the Whitworth Art Gallery on the 2nd October, combining wind-up gramophones and the latest DJ technology to create a musical accompaniment to the Gallery’s exhibitions. The bursary will then be used to bring more people into the mix: to create a platform for DJs, music producers and young people to work with galleries to animate exhibitions through music and to produce an album ‘Whitworth (Krysko & Kashiwagi remix)’ featuring all of the commissioned music.

A £3,000 grant will help Streets Above produce a pilot drama webisode centered around the lives of locals in a free-running group. They are then hoping to build on this by getting others involved with additional content across different media platforms such as blogs and events.

Last but not least, TOURIST magazine have been awarded £500 which the panel specified should go towards producing a business plan to track its future direction, from an online platform for art, music, fashion and literature, into the future.

All four finalists impressed the panel with their ambitious ideas, and they’ll be hoping for more of the same from the next round of Umbro Industries. You can upload your ideas through the Umbro Industries website now, with the next final being held in November. For more pictures from our latest final check out our special Flickr group, and if you’d like any more information on the project, feel free to contact us on industries@umbro.com.