Taking place Friday 12 - Saturday 13 June, the Horizons Festival at HOME is now open for booking
Over two days at HOME, the Horizons festival features live music, special commissions, visual art, storytelling, family-friendly arts and crafts, dance, stand-up comedy, and thought-provoking discussion.
Taking place during Refugee Week, the festival connects the creativity of Greater Manchester artists and communities with global stories.
Come along and be part of our city’s long-held tradition of celebrating and welcoming international cultures and creativity!
All events are free, but most events require a ticket to book a place. Discover the full programme and book tickets here.
Discover the Philippines: A Zine Making Workshop with Pitahpat
Friday 12 June, 2pm – 4pm, FREE, tickets required
British Home, Through a Filipino Lens: SALO SALO Come Together Launch Event
Friday 12 June, 4pm – 5.30pm, FREE, unticketed
Join us in HOME’s ground-floor café bar Inspire Gallery at 4pm – 5.30pm.
The exhibition showcases work from a Voice ESEA project curated by Filipino creatives, and includes work by the textile artist Phoebe Singzon. It brings together beautiful pieces of visual and material art. The exhibition runs until Sunday 6 September.
Heard Live: Between Worlds + Ka-Yan Ip: The Child She Finally Raised
Friday 12 June 5pm – 6.30pm, FREE, tickets required
The Child She Finally Raised is a new performance work-in-progress by Ka-Yan Ip, a Hong Kong-born theatre maker now based in Manchester. Drawing from her family history, the work explores migration, separation, and the bond between a grandmother and granddaughter across generations of political change. Blending storytelling, movement, and Cantonese song, this intimate work reflects on memory, displacement, and what we inherit from those before us.
Heard Live is a true spoken-storytelling event that amplifies unheard voices to create real, positive change. Using the theme of ‘Between Worlds’, Heard Live celebrates Vietnamese heritage with an evening of raw, real accounts of identity, belonging, and the space between where you come from and who you’re becoming.
Enjoy a specially curated line-up of everyday people sharing their unfiltered experiences. Come connect, reflect, and leave with a piece of someone else’s world.
Horizons Comedy Club: Stand Up for the World!
Friday 12 June 7.30pm – 9.30pm, FREE, tickets required
Get ready for a night of razor-sharp wit and gloriously unpredictable comedy with four of the most distinctively funny comedians on the UK circuit.Headlining is Shazia Mirza, the award-winning British Pakistani comedian with a “fearless” reputation (London Evening Standard), who delivers brutally honest satire and observation.
Joining her is the unforgettable President Obonjo – the self-proclaimed dictator-turned-comedian – as the evening’s MC. He takes no (political) prisoners and comedy chaos is guaranteed.
Tadiwa Mahlunge, the Zimbabwe-born and Cardiff-raised comic, is one of the breakout names in UK stand-up, with a blend of laid-back storytelling and brilliantly offbeat takes on modern life.
Japanese-born, award-winning Yuriko Kotani completes the line-up with her deadpan delivery and awkward observational humour.
There’s zero chance of a quiet evening with the kind of punchlines and cultural insights that make you laugh first and think later.
Afrocats Family Storytime
Saturday 13 June 10am – 11am, FREE, tickets required
An interactive workshop of African storytelling, drumming, dance, and singing for families. Come along to connect, communicate and learn from each other in a fun and supportive environment. It’s a space where creativity, cultural expression and togetherness thrive.
Family Dance Session with Afrocats
Saturday 13 June 11am – 11:45am, FREE, tickets required
This joyful family dance workshop gets adults and children moving together, connecting and enjoying music through dance.
Enjoy simple choreography, playful movement games and easy follow-me exercises, making it accessible for all ages and abilities. Build confidence, rhythm and creativity while sharing a memorable dance experience.
WAST (Women Asylum Seekers Together) Choir
Saturday 13 June. Performances at 12.15pm and 1.45pm, FREE, unticketed
Join the WAST choir for uplifting, soulful music at their appearance on HOME’s ground-floor cafe bar stage.
Way Back When: Horizons Family Theatre by Blue Elephant Theatre
Saturday 13 June, 1pm – 1.45pm, FREE, tickets required
It’s been a very long time since Grandma came to the UK – the Motherland – from Jamaica, but some memories never fade.
From cricket to carnival, she recalls her Caribbean childhood and the journey to England with all her belongings in her “grip” bag. Today, she’s sharing her stories.
Way Back When is a show for families about family history and sharing memories. Expect vibrant storytelling, traditional games, and plenty of audience interaction in a journey through time. Suitable for ages 4 – 10 but loved by all ages.
Written by Jacqui Livingston and performed by Janelle Thompson and Nicole Acquah.
“We loved it! I was impressed there was so much to learn about the Windrush memories, at the same time as being a participatory show.”
CAN Young Artists showcase featuring a collaboration with beat boxer SK Shlomo
Saturday 13 June, 2pm – 2.30pm, FREE, tickets required
Expect a bold performance of original work that shows that when young voices are given a platform, they don’t just speak, they soar!
CAN Young Artists brings together young people from Greater Manchester’s migrant and host communities? Witness the power of a new generation of talent as CAN Young Artists take to the stage in a vibrant celebration of identity, resilience and creative energy.
The legendary and record-breaking beat boxer SK Shlomo joins them on stage for an inspirational finale.
Shlomo’s Beatbox Adventure for Kids
Saturday 13 June 3pm – 4pm, FREE, tickets required
Join world record-breaking beatboxer SK Shlomo (they/them), who makes amazing music with just a mouth and a mic!
Their 5-star sell-out show is a space where anybody can become one of this sonic superhero’s sidekicks in a world of funny sounds, brilliant noises, and cool music, whether they’re aged 1 or 101.SK Shlomo has performed and collaborated with legends around the world, including Björk, Ed Sheeran, Rudimental, and Gorillaz, and has played main stages at festivals such as Glastonbury.
★★★★
“A perfect show… sets young imaginations alight” – Times
“The kid’s good. Jaw-droppingly good” – The Guardian
“Slick theatrics and soulful vocal gymnastics” – Evening Standard
“Scarily talented” – Metro
Waran Music Group
Saturday 13 June 5pm – 6pm, FREE, unticketed
Following their sold-out performance at 2024’s Horizons Festival, Waran Music Group will perform in a special unplugged live set on HOME’s cafe bar stage. Waran’s music is a rich and diverse mix of styles: Kurdish, Persian, Lorestan, Irish and Arab. The sounds combine to create a powerful message of cross-cultural connection and a call for the end of conflicts.
Refugee Action: Locked Out and Locked Up Panel Discussion and Q&A
Saturday 13 June 6.45pm – 8.15pm, FREE, tickets required
With Jonathan Kazembe (Refugee Action), Fatima Mahmood (Race Equality Network), Ben Whittam and Haleemah Alaydi, the co-authors of ‘Locked Out and Locked Up’.
Experiences of asylum policy and systemic racism in the UK and FranceRefugee Action presents their new report ‘Locked Out and Locked Up’, which highlights people’s experiences of asylum policy and the urgent need to address systemic racism in the asylum system both in the UK and France.
This discussion builds on the first phase of research on asylum as a racial justice issue and goes further by examining recent and intensifying trends in UK asylum policy that reinforce systemic racism within the asylum system and beyond the UK’s borders.
The research has been led by researchers with lived and learned experience of the UK asylum system and is grounded in qualitative research conducted on both sides of the UK – France border. The event features an audience Q&A.
RAS Voice: Refugee Action Band
Saturday 13 June 8:30pm – 9:30pm, FREE, unticketed
Join us in HOME’s cafe bar, to enjoy a performance of powerful music rooted in struggle, survival and identity. The RAS VOICE Band is a lived-experience band supported by Refugee Action. Featuring Sakuba Diala (of London’s Kongo Dia Ntotila band), Nicole, and Princess Dia, and supported by Jonathan Kazembe, the group uses music and voice to shine a light on the challenges faced by Queer and Trans migrants in the UK.
Exhibited throughout the festival and continuing until Sunday 19 July
Urunwa: No Rest in the Hive
Displayed on HOME’s front window.
Chidimma Urunwa is a Manchester-based artist who has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work reflects migration as an act shaped by sacrifice, endurance, and responsibility. Chidimma’s piece represents a place of temporary rest rather than permanence, echoing the instability that too often defines migrant life. It reflects the experience of constant movement. At the same time, the work carries a sense of resilience, the idea that even without stability, there is always a place to recover, to continue, and to endure.
This new artwork has been commissioned for the 2026 Horizons Festival Programme by HOME’s Creative Engagement team and Community Arts North West, as part of a series of artist commissions created to support Manchester-based artists with lived experience of displacement in making new work.
Also on Saturday, why not enjoy these free drop-ins? No tickets required:
Hang out in our Family Chill Zone, 11 am – 3pm
Drop in to Pot a Plant with Growing Together Levenshulme between 11am – 3pm
Horizons Festival is curated by HOME and CAN in collaboration with the Arts and Migration Group and is proudly supported by The Evan Cornish Foundation.
CAN is supported by
