Stuart WoodA new outdoor market and festival space, Escape to Freight Island, is launching in Manchester’s Depot Mayfield, which holds the Warehouse Project.
The new space will offer food, drink, music, immersive entertainment and festival takeovers. It has partnerships lined up with Festival no 6, Homoelectric and We Out Here festivals.
The space is a collaboration between industry veterans in the festival, food and hospitality sectors. Co-creators include Jon Drape of Engine no 4; Justin Crawford and Luke Cowdrey of Volta, Electrik Bar and The Refuge; Gareth Cooper of Festival N°6 and Dan Morris, who launched leading Manchester music venues Gorilla and the Albert Hall.
Escape to Freight Island will be Camden Town Brewery’s biggest collaboration outside of London, launching a boutique craft ale bar in partnership with Salford’s Pomona Island brewery. This will run alongside a specialist wine bar, and a cocktail space from the team behind Ancoats’ favourite neighbourhood bar, The Jane Eyre.
It will also feature street food traders including Voodoo Ray’s Pizza, taco vendor Madre and Baratxuri, offering grilled meat and fish.
The space will open in mid-July 2020, with an initially reduced capacity. It has been designed with a ‘safe + social manifesto’ to enable social distancing.
Phase two will begin in August, increasing capacity to 1,000 before finally reaching maximum capacity of 2,500 once restrictions are lifted.
Electriks’ Luke Cowdrey, Co-curator, said: “Escape to Freight Island isn’t your average food market. It’s a new and unique destination in Manchester, it is the next evolution in the food market sector that will fill a hole in the life of our city. Escape to Freight Island will take its place as one of the most exciting, forward-thinking and disruptive markets in the world. Escape to Freight Island is a game changer and most importantly to me, Escape to Freight Island has soul.
“Platform 15 will give a flavour of what is to come when we launch the full Escape to Freight Island experience, so let’s all meet at Platform 15 to begin our escape to freedom.”