Bunker Talks 2025
Curated by the Performance Research Group at Manchester School of Art, Bunker Talks create space for critical encounters, presentations, and dialogue, interviewing industry guests about practice & research.
Bunker Talks invite artists and researchers to talk about who they are and what they do.
Curated by the Performance Research Group at Manchester School of Art, Bunker Talks explore geopolitical, ecological or economic concerns. The talks create space for critical encounters, presentations, provocation and dialogue by interviewing industry guests about practice & research.
x Andy Smith
of Fine Arts
‘Bunker Talks started in February 2020 with a talk in the basement of No 70 Oxford Road. They continued during 2020/2021 as online talks and in 2022 returned on campus to The Salutation. As we aim to reach 150 talks in the archive in July 2025 I am pleased to have captured so many different views on what it takes to be an artist in the 21st Century and hope it is useful to students, staff and the wider public. I imagine them as a time capsule of how artists respond to the world today and deal with the challenges they face. Making them accessible via an online archive is part of our civic agenda to be an art school without walls.’
🎥 All talks are recorded, edited, captioned and archived to create an online catalogue, capturing how artists think about the world today.
Recent Archived talks from the world of visual arts, theatre, literature, design and performance include; interdisciplinary performance maker Melanie Wilson, Fashion Curator, Lecturer & Fashion Equality Activist Andrew Ibi and Chronic Insanity’s Artistic Director, Joe Strickland.
Talks take place at the Salutation Pub (Upstairs), Higher Chatham Street, Manchester, M15 6ED
Upcoming Talks
- #145 Dan Dubowitz
- Tuesday 28 January : 5:30pm
- #146 Stephen Scott-Bottoms x Andy Smith
- Tuesday 4 February : 5:30pm
- #147 Lynn Setterington
- Tuesday 25 February : 5:30pm
- #148 Jurriaan Benschop
- Tuesday 4 March : 5:00pm
- #149 Amanda Beech x Adam Walker
- Wednesday 2 April : 5:00pm
- #150 Ray Grewal
- Tuesday 6 May : 5:30pm
- #151 Manchester Academy of Fine Arts
- Tuesday 3 June: 5:30pm
- #152 Lena Simic x James Marriott
- Tuesday 1 July : 5:30pm
