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Welcome to the official website of the OpenMind Collective!

A message from OpenMind founder Benjamin Franklin (artist name Ushiku Crisafulli):

At OpenMind I have a 3 year plan.

My ambition is to start an American OpenMind in Virginia. The last OpenMind under my leadership will be in 2013, but we hope that the project can continue with the support of those who perform at the event on a regular basis, in a self-managing fashion with members of the OpenMind community and the OpenMind team working side by side to secure a better future here and abroad.

About us:

OpenMind is the name of the event run by Ushiku “Indigo Angel” Crisafulli.

The premise of this event is an OpenMind for creative possibilities, and an OpenSpace to share them.

Each month we have a theatre practitioner sharing a new work in progress piece with an informal Q+A online beforehand making familiarizing them with our audience. However we are open to adjusting the format to fit our guests criteria as we’ve had a comedy headliner at our Christmas 2010 show, a a soul singer at our Valentine’s 2011 show, and are looking into more theme specific nights from August 2011 onwards (poetry, music, comedy etc).

As well as the main OpenMind artist slot we derive our name from, we also book roughly 3 or 4 artists each month in 15 minute guest performance slots in the second half, often styles outside of traditional theatre. For instance poets, bands, comedians, musicians, MCs, and dancers have and shall continue to work with us.

We are also known for our OpenSpace, a one hour OpenMic with a difference – some pieces don’t even need a mic. If you’re a dancer you dance, if you’re a contortionist you contort… basically whatever your performance skill or talent is, if you want to share it you’re given 5 minutes to do so. Many of our guest and headline acts wowed us with their skill at the OpenSpace before going on to bigger and better things, and our supportive circle of artists often appear on the OpenSpace even when they’re not heading the bill as part of our wider performance community within Manchester.

If you’re a performer, writer, theatre practitioner, band, dancer, musician, singer, comedian, ventriloquist, breakdancer, beatboxer, MC, rapper, poet, circus performer or anything anywhere inbetween we’re happy to give you a platform to perform. We’ve currently booked up all our Spring 2012 guest slots but we will be accepting bookings for our August anniversary show soon. We’re all about sharing different performance styles in an open and friendly way, encouraging integration.