Manchester international festival is an audacious proposition at the best of times – an 18-day celebration of culture that brings together local, national and global artistic talent for a series of world premieres in art, music, theatre and beyond. The fact that the 2021 edition of the festival is going ahead at all, organised during a pandemic that effectively put the art world into stasis, is impressive. That it includes the UK’s biggest participatory art spectacle in decades (Marta Minujín’s Big Ben Lying Down, below), more free, outdoor public art than ever, and an accompanying virtual event, is extraordinary. This is a festival of resilience, creativity and hope, and one the Guardian is proud to be partnered with – not least as we celebrate our own 200th anniversary, and our roots in Manchester. Sea Change For MIF’s opening night, Deansgate is transformed by Manchester residents and radical choreographer Boris Charmatz At the heart of Boris Charmatz’s Sea Change is a simple joy in gathering together, publicly, at last – the relief! At the same time, more than a year of living through lockdowns has affected Charmatz’s piece, just as it has also affected our bodies, our psyches, and our relationships with public spaces. And the strange, rather dissonant modes that we’re all collectively navigating – excitement and monotony, well-worn habits and the need for self-expression – are precisely what makes Sea Change such an intriguing and powerful event. Spread out across Deansgate, more than 150 local residents of all ages will join professional dancers to perform choreographed movements – ranging from head-nodding and sleeping to running and jumping – over and over again. Audience members will walk the length of Deansgate, taking in the action and making the dance moves into a kind of living flipbook activated by the audience. “Designed as both a large festive gathering and a work of art, Sea Change works on two levels,” explains Charmatz. “Viewers will perceive a single organism, one single continuous movement made by the many, and each participant singularly embodying the piece.” Those who saw the French choreographer’s 2017 MIF commission, 10000 Gestures, will attest to his work being intensely moving. In July 2021, Sea Change may even feel like a rite of passage. Big Ben Lying Down With Political Books Iconic conceptual artist Marta Minujín’s enormous statement on Brexit, disillusionment and democracy “This is art about possibility,” says Marta Minujín of a work that is as huge in scale and significance as it is in generosity of spirit: a 42-metre replica of Big Ben, supine and covered in 20,000 books about British politics, all of which have been donated and will either be taken home for free by members of the public at the end of the festival, or distributed among deprived schools, prisons and community organisations. “People need this!” affirms the Argentinian artist – as vital and ambitious now as she was when collaborating with contemporaries Andy Warhol and Christo in the 60s. “We need new ideas and new places where people meet. Global symbols like Big Ben stand up straight and never change – but the world is always changing.” Indeed, post-Brexit and still amid the pandemic, Big Ben Lying Down With Political Books is saturated in meaning, speaking volumes, literally, about national identity, disillusionment with mainstream politics and democracy itself. Its books comprise copies of 150 titles chosen by a coalition of Manchester-based organisations including the People’s History Museum and Working Class Movement Library, which range from Samuel Bamford’s Passages in the Life of a Radical (1844) via Sylvia Pankhurst’s The Suffragette Movement (1931) to Marcus Rashford’s You Are a Champion (2021). Constructed in Piccadilly Gardens, this is art that is accessible, subversive, joyful, and – of course – free. Marta Minujín will be giving MIF’s opening address. Big Ben Lying Down With Political Books runs from 2–18 July at Piccadilly Gardens. On 17-18 July, take part in the “redistribution of the books”, which will be free to take away Don’t miss … We Dwell in Possibility (1-18 July) is game designer Robert Yang’s exploration of queerness via a virtual landscape; embark on trippy CGI journeys in The Neon Hieroglyph by Tai Shani (to 18 July); artists under lockdown present new films in Postcards from Now, including Lola Arias and Ibrahim Mahama (1-18 July); and avatar artist LaTurbo Avedon teams up with Fortnite Creative for Your Progress Will Be Saved (18 July). In person and online, Looking Forward to Tomorrow has activists, artists and residents helming discussions on equality (10 July) and the environment (17 July). Outdoor, accessible, free art fills the city this year, in response to the reality of Covid. What’s so special about Christine Sun Kim’s MIF commission, Captioning the City (1-18 July, free), is that it invites you to join in. Sun Kim is a US-born, Berlin-based artist whose relationship with deafness and sound opens up whole new worlds of communicative possibilities, and the captions she has installed on buildings and streets throughout Manchester range from playful to poetic to profound. All you have to do is look up.