Mary Anne Hobbs and Anna Phoebe: WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Mary Anne Hobbs and Anna Phoebe: WHAT DO YOU WANT? premiered at Manchester International Festival 2025.

The project was designed in 3 parts:

1. A Public Artwork

A Billboard in the City Centre, with an open invitation to the people of Manchester to answer the question WHAT DO YOU WANT? – write directly onto the Billboard or drop a private message in a Postbox.

The Billboard became chaotic, messy and beautiful, smothered with messages.

By contrast, the Postbox held many secrets... intimate personal notes.

All these responses became integral to the work: graffiti, illustration, poetry, protest.

2. Live Performance

A radical sound-art experiment, beginning in a subconscious space.

Mary Anne's set blends music from Manchester’s new generation of underground musicians and Anna’s improvised responses on violin, peaking with a spoken word piece that Mary Anne assembled from messages on the Billboard and in the Postbox.

Lighting was designed as a structural form, to cast an illusory boundary at the feet of the audience, a circle of light that could be crossed with one free step.

3. Short Film

Mary Anne and Anna commissioned the young Manchester based film maker Joshua Bridge. They gave Joshua an open brief, asking him simply to respond to the question: WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Joshua delivered a short film, working with Poet Charlie O’Brien, and a young creative crew of fast rising stars (see film credits).