We sat down for a quick chat with Dawn Taylor, CEO and Artistic Director of Manipulate Festival.
How did you shape this year’s expanded, city-wide programme to reflect Manipulate Festival’s evolving mission and identity within Scotland’s cultural landscape?
This year it feels like we’re throwing down a gauntlet to smash preconceptions about visual theatre, puppetry and animated film as either only children’s artforms or as peculiar and niche, to show that visually-led work is for everyone: bringing the streets to life with illuminated inflatable creations, occupying the city’s major stages and screens with multi-award winning and critically acclaimed work, and platforming some of Scotland’s own fantastic talent. This year’s event sees 10 international and Scottish visual theatre productions, 5 screening events showing 34 films from 19 countries, work-in-progress productions, workshops and events, and a 7m inflatable illuminated octopus puppet heading up a marine-themed parade through the city. We’re also thrilled to be working with 9 venues across Edinburgh, including with Edinburgh’s iconic Filmhouse and Lyra in Craigmillar for the first time. So shaping the festival is about reaching across the whole city and saying, we’re here and we’ve got something you’re going to enjoy.
With themes of transformation, empathy and global connection at the heart of the 2026 edition, what conversations or reflections do you hope audiences will carry with them after the festival?
It’s so hard to sum up an eclectic festival programme with only a few themes, as there are lots of artists with so many things to say! But I see our artists grappling with the big issues of our times but through a lens of hope, empathy and community – and so with a media cycle which feels dominated by a sense of endless crisis, we’re excited to offer audiences shows which explore political, social, emotional and philosophical questions but with charm, humour, and truly extraordinary artistry. Shows like Coffee With Sugar? by KMZ Kollectiv explore issues like colonialism and unequal trade through music, coffee beans and candyfloss puppets, or Sadiq Ali’s new show Tell Me, which roots a difficult diagnosis in notions of community and acceptance. And of course we have plenty of silliness and fun, such as with returning festival favourites Opposable Thumb Theatre and their anarchic one-man Don Quixote. Our film programme offers a deliciously dark horror strand this year, alongside moving and thought-provoking animated documentaries, and a selection of the very best short works from Scotland.
This is Manipulate’s most ambitious edition to date—what guided your decision to introduce new strands such as the Scottish animation competition and your expanded community outreach?
For many years, Manipulate Arts (the organisation behind the festival) has run community engagement and talent development activity, because we are interested in the whole artistic ecosystem where everybody, regardless of background, is able to participate in and create brilliant visually-led work. This year marks a conscious shift to bring these strands closer to the festival offer, allowing the local, national and international to feed each other, bringing local stories to an international stage and international work to communities that don’t often have access to it. Work with young people in Wester Hailes reflects the next step in a 5-year partnership with the brilliant WHALE Arts who really understand how to anchor cultural provision in local voices and stories. The Scottish animation competition offers a vital platform to celebrate the extraordinary animation talent we have here in Scotland; platforms such as this are rare but vital for nurturing independent filmmaking practice.
As Artistic Director, how do you balance elevating homegrown Scottish talent with showcasing international voices to create a cohesive festival narrative?
It’s important to us that Manipulate Festival is a place where Scotland meets the world. We don’t impose ratios and prioritise the most urgent stories and compelling voices, but we generally have a roughly 50/50 split between Scottish and international work in our performance programme. We spend the 18 months leading up to each edition visiting international festivals to see work, alongside nurturing and supporting Scottish work in development. Of the 5 new Scottish theatre premieres in this year’s festival, four have been supported through our own talent development programmes. In film, we have increased our focus on Scottish work this year through our first ‘in competition’ programme and the Scottish animation award.
In a year featuring world premieres, cross-continental collaborations and genre-blending performances, what excites you most about how visual theatre and animation are evolving?
I see more cross-artform work now than in previous years, and more artists from other performance and screen disciplines moving into these fields, as there is increasing recognition of their potential for innovative storytelling. That is exciting, because if more diverse voices and perspectives are shaping the work we will continue to see more diversity in the stories being told and the ways in which the techniques are being used. This includes Scottish-based artists like Mamoru Iriguchi and Julia Taudevin, who have built highly successful careers in Scotland in contemporary and text-based theatre but are relatively new to working with these visual techniques. The combination of their diverse artistic experiences with the scope and potential of the artforms they are working with makes for some really exciting works with Size Matters and Auntie Empire. I definitely also see more festivals across Europe broadening their definition of what puppetry means and incorporating more object-based work, physical theatre and circus, something that Manipulate has championed for many years.
How do you see Manipulate Festival contributing to the long-term sustainability and visibility of puppetry, visual theatre and animation across Scotland?
Manipulate Arts celebrate and champion these artforms across many different contexts, so you may participate in a stop motion animation workshop in a school or library, be supported as an emerging professional animator to attend a networking event or workshop, receive seed funding to make an animated film, take part in a local community project animating local myths and stories, attend a premiere of an exciting new Scottish animated film or attend an international screening at Manipulate Festival. Each of these experiences is as important as the next in embedding creativity and visually-led practice at the heart of Scottish cultural life. Through the work that we are doing we hope that increasing numbers of people from all walks of life can have access to and take part in these brilliant artforms. There is an intrinsic benefit with visually-led work to reach people across barriers of ability and geography, without a reliance on the spoken word, and so we hope to keep growing the reach of our programme in Scotland and beyond in the years to come.