MAW 2025 Performance

Experience contemporary art as it unfolds in real time. This year's performance programme brings together artists working across sculpture, movement, spoken word and live art, transforming galleries, streets and unexpected spaces into stages for encounter and exchange.

Highlights include Liberty Hodes, piloting a life-sized cardboard JCB through the town in a playful exploration of labour, industry and place; Daisy Collingridge, whose extraordinary wearable sculptures blur the boundaries between body, costume and performance; and Chris Dobrowolski, presenting Compost Heap One, his satirical wheelbarrow fit for a president. The programme also features live poetry performances during the festival's artists' moving image screenings at Middlesbrough Town Hall, click on the button to find out more.