Bunker Talks Winter/Spring 2026
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.
Bunker Talks invite artists and researchers to talk about who they are and what they do.
Programme subject to change – Please check the website for latest dates and times.
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.
- Testament (20 January)
- Kelly Jones x Adam Z. Robinson (3 February)
- Selina Thompson (3 March)
- Tanztheater Adrian Look (24 March)
- The Guardians of Living Matter (24 March)
Testament is a writer, rapper, educator and world record breaking beatboxer.
Tuesday 20 January, 5:30pm. Manchester Poetry Library , Grosvenor East Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester, M15 6BG
Testament is writer of awards nominated play Black Men Walking (Best Play UK Theatre Awards, Best New Play Writer’s Guild of Great Britain) and Orpheus In The Record Shop which was broadcast on BBC Four TV.
As a poet Testament was Black Nature Writer-in Residence for the Yorkshire Dales 2024, and part the award-winning Hot Poets eco-poetry collective. He is also a contributor to the acclaimed Gifts of Gravity & Light: A Nature Almanac for the 21st Century (Hodder Books) 2021.
Kelly Jones x Adam Z. Robinson
Tuesday 3 February, 5:30pm. School of Digital Arts (SODA), Higher Chatham Street, Manchester, M15 6ED
Dr Kelly Jones is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Lincoln where she specialises in theatrical realisations of the supernatural and stage Gothic. Her most recent publication is Staging the Ghost Story: Shadows in the Limelight (Palgrave, 2025).
Adam Z. Robinson is a writer, theatre-maker and award-winning author of flash fiction.
Stage Fright: Staging the Ghost Story
Ghost stories have long been associated with performance. Many of us have enjoyed the thrill of sharing the telling of spooky tales around the winter fireside, or the thrill of dressing up as a ghoul for Halloween. But what happens to the tales of the dead when they are brought to life in the theatre? Join host Brontë Schiltz (writer and academic), Adam Z. Robinson (writer, actor and theatre-maker), Dr Kelly Jones (academic and author of Staging the Ghost Story: Shadows in the Limelight) as they discuss the thrills and challenges of staging the ghost story.
Selina Thompson
Tuesday 3 March, 5:30pm. Manchester Poetry Library , Grosvenor East Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester, M15 6BG
Selina Thompson is a performance artist based in the United Kingdom. Her work has been shown and praised nationally and internationally. Her practice is chiefly concerned with grief, love, and the world to come, and she seeks to make work that is visually striking, and lyrical, even while grounded in politics.
Thompson is the artistic director of Selina Thompson Ltd, an interdisciplinary company creating installations, theatre shows, workshops and radio.
Tanztheater Adrian Look
Tuesday 24 March, 5:30pm. Salutation Pub (Upstairs), Higher Chatham Street, Manchester, M15 6ED
“the human in the art” through Tanztheater
In this Bunker Talk, hosted by Andrea Maciel (Manchester School of Theatre), Adrian Look—director of Tanztheater London—will offer an in-depth reflection on his creative processes and artistic trajectory. Drawing on his formative training with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch school in Grman, Adrian will discuss how he develops choreography and performance through a blend of community-focused practice, pedagogical approaches, and philosophical inquiry. His work expands the possibilities of observing and expressing human experience through the distinctive lens of Tanztheater. With over two decades of experience as a lecturer, director, and creator, Adrian brings a rich perspective that invites us to rethink Tanztheater as a space where embodied knowledge, creativity, and critical reflection intersect.
The Guardians of Living Matter in collaboration with Lowry
Tuesday 24 March, 5:30pm. School of Digital Arts (SODA), Higher Chatham Street, Manchester, M15 6ED
Artists Sophy King and John-Paul Brown discuss their current exhibition The Guardians of Living Matter, opening at Lowry from 31 January – 29 March 2026. Their collaborative practice explores ecology, climate justice and our relationship with living and digital networks – bringing together sculpture, installation, research and regenerative materials.
Centred around a major new multi-sensory installation made from AI and mycelium, the exhibition imagines radical ecological futures and new ways of living in balance with the world around us.
Join us for a conversation about artistic collaboration, living materials, and what it means to create in the age of climate crisis. The project has been commissioned through Lowry’s flagship artist development programme, Developed With, which supports artists across the North of England to scale their ambitions and reach new audiences. The exhibition will run in Lowry’s Andrew Law Galleries from 31 January – 29 March 2026.
🎥 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; Zodwa Nyoni writer of critically acclaimed play Liberation.
‘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.’
Michael Pinchbeck Professor of Theatre , Senior Research Lead , Art and Performance , Manchester Metropolitan University
