Monday, November 9, 2026 · Graphic Design
Motion North 2027 Brings Motion Design Talks, Workshops and a New Marketplace to Manchester
Noted by Tom May · 733 reads
Motion North returns to Freight Island on 10–11 March 2027 with more than 20 speakers, hands-on workshops and a new showcase for independent artists.
Motion North’s next edition brings talks, workshops and a new artist marketplace together under one roof in Manchester. The festival returns to Freight Island on 10–11 March 2027, with more than 20 speakers planned across three stages. For motion designers and adjacent creative teams, the programme offers several ways to engage with the work: watch presentations, try specialist software in workshops, get feedback in portfolio reviews or meet other practitioners between sessions.
Local studio Mighty Giant runs the festival, which began in 2010 as a grassroots gathering for creative people to exchange ideas. It has since grown to serve motion designers, animators, filmmakers, VFX artists, illustrators and designers. That mix gives the event room to connect disciplines whose processes often overlap, while keeping its focus on motion and moving image.
A line-up spanning 3D, illustration and animation
The first announced speakers point to a programme interested in different routes into motion work. Found, known for high-end 3D product and brand films, brings a studio perspective on commissioned imagery. Designer and artist Lucas Zanotto draws on a product design background for playful work, while DNEG adds the experience of a VFX studio known for feature films. Their inclusion sets up a useful range of approaches, from brand-led image making to characterful design and large-scale visual effects.
Illustration and animation studio Nice Shit and Emmy-winning animation director Margherita Premuroso are also on the bill. The rest of the announced names widen the field: animation studio Panic; 3D artist Eva Cremers; 3D design studios Foreal and Dada Projects; stop-motion studio A+C; designer and animator Mat Voyce; animation duo Duncan & Max; illustrator and animator Alice Bloomfield; and Mikey Dowdle.
That range matters for working designers because motion projects rarely sit neatly within one specialism. A product film might combine modelling, lighting and graphic direction; an animated illustration can depend as much on timing and character as on drawing style. Talks from artists and studios with different practices can help attendees compare those decisions and take ideas back to their own briefs. The announced programme doesn’t yet describe individual talk topics, so the practical detail will emerge as the schedule develops.
Workshops and a place to show finished work
Alongside talks, Motion North plans workshops, demos, panels and portfolio reviews. The hands-on sessions will include Cavalry and Houdini. These give attendees a chance to spend time with tools used in motion and 3D workflows, rather than only hearing about finished projects. For anyone weighing up a new technique, a workshop can make the process easier to assess: how a tool fits into a task, what steps it involves and where it might suit a real production.
The event will also introduce The Marketplace, a curated showcase where independent artists can present and sell crafts, graphic prints and books. That addition gives visitors a direct way to encounter work in physical form and gives artists a setting to put their own objects in front of a creative audience. Prints and books also offer a different kind of reference from a screen-based portfolio: they make choices around scale, paper and sequence part of the experience.
Social mixers will round out the programme, including an event hosted by Creative Brunch, with further details still to come. Those informal spaces can be valuable at a festival built around several disciplines: a conversation after a talk may reveal how another team solved a shared production problem, or help an independent artist find an audience for their work.
The speaker list is still in progress, and more names are expected before the event. For now, the useful planning details are clear: Motion North takes place at Freight Island in Manchester city centre on 10–11 March 2027, with more than 20 speakers, three stages, workshops and a new artist marketplace. The next update to watch is the fuller programme, which should show how the festival’s mix of studio talks, software sessions and independent work fits across the two days.
Further details and the current line-up are available from Motion North.
