#futr09 Final year for Futuresonic – bring on FutureEverything

So Futuresonic will soon be over – but long live FutureEverything.
At last night’s Northern Quarter launch party for the 2009 festival of art, music, ideas and events, artistic director Drew Hemment unveiled the fact that, after 14 years, the festival is to be launched under a new name for next year to more accurately reflect the event.
And he also revealed some of the line-up for this year’s event to the assembled crowd at Café Cup which includes for the first-time reaching out into Liverpool with a rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine ringing out from the cathedral bells.
It’s such a diverse programme with art events such as singing trees, music coming from 2D graffiti barcodes and even a commission to prospect for oil across Manchester from artist Jonathan Cohrs, that it’s impossible to include everything in one short blog post – check out the official website for full details.
The highlight for me will be the Social Media Summit. Again we have broad themes – Environment 2.0, Digital Futures, Identity and Trust, Mobile and Semantic Web: Cultural Algorithms.
Keynote speakers include inventor of the term ‘social tools’ Stowe Boyd and Adam Greenfield who is an expert on next generation mobile and human-friendly interfaces.
There’s plenty more at the official website www.futuresonic.com and there’s also regular updates via Twitter @futuresonic09

The festival runs from May 13-16.