Manchester has always been a truly international city, home to people from all over the globe, many of whom have made major contributions to the city’s significant development . Manchester is also recognised as one of the UK’s leading cities in terms of music. So why, until now, have so many of the most talented world music performers seen fit to entirely miss the Manchester area off their touring circuits?

It’s 2010 and it’s time we did something about it – it’s time for Manchester’s first Cultural Collage World Music Festival.

For this year’s festival, we set out to create something small, but beautiful. We asked the larger venues what world music events they had already programmed between 5 and 16 May 2010 and then invited musicians, promoters and other venues to put on world music events in between. The response has been overwhelming! There are lot of people involved in world music in our city and now we are all working together on this exciting new project!

Our terrific volunteers from the Cultural Collage Collective have given their time and energy freely and it is totally due to them that I have the great honour of welcoming you to Manchester – the new home of world music to witness the birth of a new festival.

Welcome to the Cultural Collage World Music Festival 2010!