How Manchester’s Aviva Studios Cemented Its Place as Industry-Leading Home For Music & Arts

Aviva Studios is Manchester’s latest cultural powerhouse. Since October 2023, the venue has welcomed over 1.5 million visitors and is rewriting the rules of performance and creativity – bringing music, theatre, gaming, and visual arts together under one roof. Designed by world-renowned architect Ellen van Loon, its flexible spaces and cutting-edge acoustics make it a playground for global artists and local talent alike.

“This is a venue of the future – we don’t worry about old definitions of art forms. Musicians, video artists, and performers are all mixed together here,” John McGrath, artistic director and chief executive of Factory International, tells Billboard U.K. With a focus on commissioning and booking new interdisciplinary works, the non-profit arts organisation – which produces the biennial Manchester International Festival and operates Aviva Studios – is setting a gold standard for collaboration, positioning the building as a cultural landmark of the North.

From the outside alone, Aviva Studios is a showstopper: an industrial feel to its exterior is complemented by the overlappings of surrounding arches and bridges. The venue has “unique scale and flexibility and exceptional acoustics”, McGrath explains, meaning that its three main internal spaces – the ground floor, warehouse and auditorium – can be reconfigured to present a multitude of different types and scales of events, and be divided by a moveable acoustic wall.

“Aviva Studios has been designed to offer artists the opportunity to do things here that they can’t do anywhere else,” he continues. “Each artist who uses the space will teach us new things about the possibilities. I’m excited to welcome the most exciting global artists in the space, and also, in particular, to see Manchester artists starting to grow into this space and become confident with its potential – growing their ambitions and ideas.”

The venue launched with the world premiere of Free Your Mind, Danny Boyle’s large-scale dance show based on the classic film The Matrix. Radiohead’s 2003 LP Hail to the Thief was reworked for an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which opened at Aviva Studios over the spring. In October, another global exclusive arrived with the debut of Marina Abramović’s Balkan Erotic Epic performance art show, which was divided into 13 acts, featured 70 performers, and ran for four hours each night. 

Other recent highlights, McGrath notes, include Build Manchester in partnership with Adidas, which saw Aviva Studios become home to a custom-built public skateboarding plaza this past August. There have been inclusive open deck nights, in which aspiring DJs can practice mixing, as well as a series of four live-streamed shows in partnership with Amazon Music, featuring Bastille, Franz Ferdinand and Mumford & Sons.

Last night (Dec. 2) the venue played host to a Billboard U.K. Live experience with Grammy-winning musician Corinne Bailey Rae, comprising a stunningly intimate performance as well as an exclusive Q&A event with fans.

The 2026 gig calendar is already looking stacked, too. Alt-pop icon Halsey will kick off the year with a stop on her Badlands anniversary tour, followed by the likes of Fatboy Slim, Basement Jaxx and international acts Sombr, Kesha and Big Thief throughout the rest of spring. Lily Allen’s highly-anticipated West End Girl show will also take over the venue for two sold-out nights in March.

“You can tell the place is built for people who love live events,” says Caitie Inson, a Manchester resident who attended FKA Twigs’ headline show at Aviva Studios this past spring, for which the lighting and production value were “incredible”, she notes. “What struck me the most was how open and inviting the venue felt, as well as the breadth of the shows and experiences on offer.”

Multinational insurance company Aviva invested in the space to create a sense of community in Manchester, and local residents have responded in kind. “In Aviva Studios, we saw a once-in-a generation opportunity to be part of one of the most ambitious cultural buildings anywhere in Europe,” says Tom Whiteside, head of group sponsorship at Aviva.

As principal partner of the Factory Academy, which offers everything from a six month-long music promoter course to hands-on experiences for trainee sound technicians, Aviva is helping deliver free training and skills programmes for young people in Manchester. Another “long-term commitment” for the venue has involved the introduction of an accessible ticketing policy via the Aviva £10 ticket initiative. In its first year, 21,000 low-cost tickets were accessed, as per a report from The Sponsor, while all students, over 65s, and people on low incomes can register for 50% discount across all Aviva Studios shows.

With Factory International, Whiteside says that Aviva has “a partner whose values align perfectly with our own, with a core ethos that this building should serve the community and be inclusive and accessible.” The partnership builds on the company’s long-running success with the 51,700-capacity Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, which they acquired a 10-year deal for the naming rights in 2009, and subsequently extended the arrangement in 2018 and 2025.

“Aviva’s partnership is so much more than a name above the door – it is commitment to create long-term community, social and economic impact, and to enhance the experiences of the millions of people that come through the door,” continues Whiteside, explaining how Aviva and Factory International want to set a gold standard for community outreach in the arts.

Factory International’s name was chosen in a nod to the seminal Manchester label Factory Records, which helped launch local legends Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays, as well as the famed nightclub The Haçienda, which was pivotal to the “Madchester” era of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Although the organization has deep cultural roots, its mission statement is future-oriented, centered around breaking barriers and bringing people together at Aviva Studios.

One of the organisation’s key initiatives, the Neighbourhood Organisers, allows for a select, paid team of 12 residents from different boroughs to help connect their community with opportunities at the venue. Elsewhere, Factory International offers a wealth of fellowships and bursaries each year, which involve mentoring opportunities, coaching, observational placements, peer-to-peer learning and access to their commissions and internal teams.

An in-depth accessibility policy has also been paramount to Aviva Studios’ early success, allowing it to become a well-known beacon in the city for neurodivergent and disabled gig-goers. The Factory International team are currently working on opening a quiet space in the venue, while accessible performances (including captioned, audio-described, relaxed and BSL-interpreted presentations) have been delivered for each production.

As McGarth concludes: “We take more shows of all kinds around the world than any arts organisation in the U.K. The fact that Factory International is based at and runs Aviva Studios means that this is where some of the most exciting new work in the world is produced and seen for the very first time.”