Initiative Arts Projects Ltd

Initiative Arts Projects Ltd., now trading as IAP:MCR was formed in 2012 to create and deliver bespoke arts projects from time to time. In its first ten years of trading it worked on a project-by- project basis, delivering Polari Mission, and Life’s a Drag, oral history and arts projects with the Heritage Lottery Fund, Double-Ender, a touring theatre production with Arts Council England and No Place Like Home – a short film premiered in Reykjavik. IAP:MCR’s principal programme of work in between 2022 and 2024 was the delivery of Legacy of ’67: a project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The project began in 2022-23 and was concluded the following year. This latter project captured the stories of LGBTQ+ people through oral history techniques and explored the personal experiences of interviewees during the extraordinary changes in legislation that have taken place from the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 to the present day. It was a multi- disciplinary collaboration that created a series of exhibitions, performances, visual artwork, lectures, symposia, and installations. As a result of this project, newly collected testimony was lodged as part of Archives+ at Manchester Central Library and this inspired the commissioning and presentation of an original play Great Indecencies by Joshua Val Martin, and an exhibition of newly commissioned visual art by Jez Dolan. The project culminated in a symposium on June 6, 2023, where the company launched its free digital walking tour of the city made in association with Free Manchester Walking Tours. At the beginning of 2024-25, IAP:MCR was successful in its application to The National Lottery Heritage Fund who generously agreed to support the delivery of a new project Protest! – Documenting Dissent: a two-year long research and creative engagement programme. Protest! takes as its starting point an extraordinary public demonstration of dissent by LGBTQ+ people and their allies and friends. In 1988 coinciding with the height of the AIDS crisis; less than 10% of British adults thought that same-sex relations were ‘acceptable’. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government introduced Section 28 of the Local Government Act which prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ by schools and local authorities. In direct response to this, and as an act of protest and defiance, over 20,000 people took to Manchester’s streets ; it was the biggest LGBTQ+ demonstration in British history. Using this singular event as our starting point, we will once again take testimony from members of the public that will be lodged as part of Archives+ at Manchester Central Library. We will make a short film that will be given to the Northwest Film Archive, we’ll undertake archival research and will mount public exhibitions that illuminate the work. In 2024-25 two of our company directors resigned their posts. These were Daniel Graham Jarvis on 7 th August 2024 and Janine Waters on 11 th February 2025; IAP:MCR thanks them both for their tireless service over several years. We welcomed a new director to the company on 11 th February 2025 and we look forward to working closely with Mr. Ellis Morgan. We plan to extend the board further in 2025-26.