'Manchester is brighter, better and bolder now - this is a beacon of hope'

Just a few months ago, Benji Reid wasn’t quite sure what his upcoming show at Manchester International Festival (MIF) would look like. A pioneer of hip hop theatre turned award-winning photographer, the Manchester-born artist and creative is now just weeks away from unveiling one of his most daring projects to date - and he’s inviting you to see it through his eyes.

The self-described choreo-photolist and I first met back in March at New Century Hall for the programme launch for MIF, the biennial arts and culture festival, which showcases original work here in Manchester from international artists and homegrown talent. For Benji, who now sits in front of me in a studio space on the edge of the Northern Quarter, the show, entitled ‘Find Your Eyes’, has come a long way since then.

“I’ve been working on this piece for about six years and it’s been so long because I wanted to work out how to combine my photography with live performance, dance and music,” explains Benji. “I had to work out where they all sit as one language.

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If it sounds like he’s spinning a lot of plates, it’s because he is. While in recent years he’s become known for his defiantly original and thought-provoking images - a talent that landed him the Wellcome Photography Prize in 2020 - his career has spanned several disciplines - from popping with Broken Glass, one of the UK’s pre-eminent breakdance crews, to securing a place at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, and introducing British audiences to hip-hop theatre through his company Broken Cycles.

His challenge with his latest show is revisiting those chapters and interviewing them with his most recent practice as a photographer. Deeper than that though, the themes of his show, which touch on identity, race, belonging, and mental health, require him to step out of his comfort zone in a way that he never has before.

“For this show I’m going to be a multimedia artist combining photography, storytelling and dance to create this live performance and experience,” he explains. “Find Your Eyes is autobiographical in nature and it's really about soul searching and I bring up issues that I’ve had within my life and we explore them.

“It’s actually quite close to what was written in the original scripts and in making this work I’ve taken maybe 3,000 reference images, so I’ve been working constantly on the script and visualising it and bringing it to life. What’s been great over the last few weeks though is putting it on the floor and seeing it on a large scale - it’s as I envisioned and maybe even a little bit better,” he smiles.

While he’s not too specific on the details, taking care not to spoil it for those coming down too see it, what he can tell me is that the show will touch on his experience as a black man, the trials and tribulations of growing up in British Society, his family and struggles with mental health.

It also touches on visibility, something he says will always be a conversation for those who feel like they have been othered. “Whiteness is at the centre of culture and what happens is that if you’re on the outside of that, you’re always compared to what is at the centre. Being visible and present is having your blackness at the centre of your culture and having a wider conversation with the wider world.

“So that conversation about who has power and whose lens is your work seen through and judged through is very interesting. Visibility will always be a conversation but it changes with each generation because my youngest daughter feels very visible, she feels present and is engaged in lots of conversations around blackness and gender.

“And it changed for me from when I was popping and breakdancing back in the day because there was virtually nobody on TV or radio, except for maybe Trevor MacDonald, but in terms of people pushing the culture forward we were virtually invisible, but that’s changed now and it’s much more nuanced.”

It was during his breakdancing days that Benji says he first felt visible and empowered. In a similar vein, picking up the camera in recent years has given him a voice and an opportunity to reinvent himself again.

“When I took up photography, on one level it was a reaction from my company being cut from the Arts Council, so it was my way of rebelling,” he says. It was about being creative without funding, and my way of finding artistic freedom because in my eyes the funding is very black and white - you either get it or you don’t and then what?

“There was something really special about being able to make and disseminate my own images and my work without ever asking permission. I make it in my home studio and I disseminated it through Instagram and Facebook and that’s what took my career off, a whole new reaction - so now coming back to theatre is quite scary.”

Describing the new show, Benji says he’s taking something that had been private and intimate and inviting an audience in.

“I feel like I’m at a threshold in terms of taking photography, theatre and dance and making a live show out of it," he says. "There's something quite daring about it, but it's scary how vulnerable and open you have to be to allow someone to view your process.

“I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’m not drawn to being pulled out of my comfort zone, but I feel like this show couldn’t be made unless I pass that threshold. You get to this point - and I actually wrote this in my diary - where you can’t keep making work in my comfort zone.”

Not only is Benji’s work on the stage at Manchester Academy, but as part of MIF it’s also being displayed to the rest of the world - an opportunity that is not lost on Benjy, who grew up in Whalley Range.

“I feel that it’s extremely important that local artists like myself get the chance to be on an international stage and allowed to sit alongside huge artists from around the world because it grounds the festival in terms of the ecology of the arts - we get to say ‘look, we have world-class artists here as well’.

“My friend from Birmingham said to me that the festival is the jewel in the crown here. Once every two years you get the cream of the crop coming to Manchester and presenting world-class work. There’s a beautiful sense of being recognised and we’ve become a beacon of hope for other fledgling artists, because Manchester is a hotbed of amazing artists from music to theatre to poetry and beyond.”

Having grown up in Manchester in the 70s and 80s, Benji has also witnessed the evolution of the city’s arts and culture scene and feels that it has come a long way. “Manchester is a different city, it’s cosmopolitan now, it has a different swagger about it, a different energy, you could say it’s the second city because culturally it absolutely is.

“With the advent of the MediaCity, the massive football clubs we have, it sits culturally on the international stage. In the 80s Manchester was grey and dour, there wasn’t much to do and now you’ve got a 24-hour city, people eating al fresco. It feels brighter, better and bolder, and I feel like we bat pretty big for our size."