MIF calls on tech start up Wakelet

Manchester International Festival (MIF) is using digital start-up Wakelet to post video, pictures and music about artists at the event.

Manchester-based Wakelet is a free-to-use social content sharing platform which can organise links to articles, images, videos and other content into collections called Wakes.

The digital start-up, which launched in 2014, has proved to be a handy solution to the MIF team tasked with organising the high volume of online material around such events as the contemporary ballet Tree of Codes or musical wonder.land.

MIF’s digital content producer Eleanor Scott said: “Our website has to serve many functions, including signposting visitors to lots of interesting material online related to the artists we have commissioned. Wakelet lets us do that in a really quick and effective way.”

MIF Chairman Tom Bloxham said: “We are always looking to work with new and innovative digital businesses and the fact that Wakelet is a Manchester company makes this partnership even more exciting.

“The MIF is a festival of premieres and we are glad to be working with Wakelet to serve audiences who are using our site from all over the world.”

Wakelet founder Jamil Khalil added: “Our vision is to empower people and organisations to shape the web by creating online collections in a personal and more meaningful way, so we are really pleased that MIF is using Wakelet.

“Interest is growing fast among individuals, artists, bands, sports clubs, businesses and academic institutions, who are finding it easy to create and share their collections, whether privately or publicly.”

Already linking Wakelet to their websites are Manchester Confidential, pro-manchester and sports clubs including Swansea City FC. More partnerships across sports, businesses, charities and the education sector are set to follow, as Wakelet helps them showcase and make sense of the content that is relevant to them.

The business has raised £1.25m to date from UK, Europe and the US with further investment planned soon.

Early backers include Chris Byatte and Joe Wee, the Macclesfield-based original publishers of Angry Birds.

Wakelet is soon set to reveal a mobile app for iOS and Android, and improvements making it even easier to save and organise links.