Collaboration, co-creation, innovation

Manchester Science Partnerships purpose in life is to provide the places and connections scientists, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs need to get chatting, share ideas and build businesses.

Corridor Manchester is one of MSP’s biggest and most ambitious projects and they wanted the Global property industry to be inspired by the project – starting with a headline presentation at the world’s leading property investment conference, MIPIM 2016.

A corridor to the future

Two world class universities. A leading science park. Galleries. Research labs. A business school. Brilliant connectivity. Manchester Corridor has all the ingredients to be one of Europe’s best innovation districts. We’ll let Urbanisation Academic Bruce Katz explain what these districts are all about:

“These districts, by our definition, are geographic areas where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators and accelerators. They are also physically compact, transit-accessible, and technically-wired and offer mixed-use housing, office, and retail.”

With a location in the heart of the city, Corridor Manchester is brilliantly placed to help create just such an environment – a place where scientists and entrepreneurs can inspire each other, make breakthroughs and maybe even change the world.

The Neighbourhood was commissioned to tell the story of the brand, the place, the Corridor, to an international crowd with a dynamic film about the project.

Getting into the Corridor’s collaborative spirit

Corridor Manchester’s ethos is that great things happen when people work together. So we collaborated with their partners at the Royal Northern College of Music, commissioning a soundtrack composed by Gary Carpenter and performed by the Diverso Quartet.

The film packs a lot of information into its 2½ minutes, capturing the Corridor’s relentless energy with a kaleidoscope effect that makes you feel as though you are constantly moving forward. Exciting investors with the potential of the area, it also shows the ways that business, education, research and culture are already colliding in unexpected partnerships, such as the award-winning SICK arts festival, which builds a vibrant arts programme around issues of mental and physical health.

The film was made entirely in The Neighbourhood’s Manchester studio, and took 6 weeks to complete. We started with a workshop, picking the minds of key players in the project like Rowena Burns and Chris Oglesby, developed a script, helped manage stakeholders and created a suite of photography and graphic assets with which to make the film.

Without a huge budget to shoot new material, our team created a film that got great ‘talkability’ and buzz at MIPIM 2016, and that MSP continue to use for presentations and online. The MSP team fed back that they were incredibly proud of the film, so we’ll take that as a job well done!