Dipact website

DIPACT

A True Taste of Art

DIPACT started in 2016 as a collective of professional artists from diverse backgrounds who wanted to focus on their practice and become part of the Manchester community. Today, we are a business led by artists who bring together art, food, and innovation.

Mahboobeh Rajabi

Artist, Creative Producer & Entrepreneur

As an asylum seeker, I used to sit in cafes and design projects that focused on how artists can be recognised in Manchester. Now, my creative project has come to life, and it's time for DIPACT.

Mohammad Tohidi

National Trust Lead Chef

With over 10 years of experience serving hundreds of customers weekly, Mohammad has been rated as one of the best National Trust Cafes and Restaurants. In addition to his culinary skills, he is also a visual artist and guitar player.

Lead Artists

Tagné Tebu

Born and raised in Cameroon, Tagné Tebu is a multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist musician, band leader, music director and composer. He has worked with musicians from many different cultures and musical backgrounds. His music blends African melodies and grooves with jazz harmony and is based on African storytelling on the themes of love, war and peace, conveying a bittersweet sense of melancholy balanced by irrepressible optimism. He’s got a smooth and soulful sound that reaches a depth within the listener.

Tagné developed his piano skills by exploring music on his own. He spent several years as a soloist, performer and musical director in Cameroon, Germany, Denmark and France where he was exposed to American Jazz. Tagné’s music is powerful and introspective, blending African, Latin and Caribbean musical influences.

Tagné has a spiritual view of composing music, feeling out each composition as though it were coming to him from another space, another dimension, catching notes from the silence and then simply placing them together. Tagné’s solo style reveals a dissonant, Avant garde orientation.

Shahireh Sharif

Shahireh Sharif is a prize-winning, bilingual writer, poet and performance artist particularly interested in exploring identity, race and gender. She has published two books in Persian and a few short fictions in English, written plays, performed solo and group shows and exhibited her photography in many galleries and libraries in the UK. Shahireh has received an Arts Council DYCP grant in 2020 to develop her website, jarofwords.com, and publicise the process of writing ‘The Age of Deception’, her debut novel.

Shahireh has worked with cultural partners such as Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, The Lowry, HOME, Z arts, Stockport Central Library, the Portico Library, Commonword, Journeys Festival, CAN, Failsworth Library, Divergency, Manchester International Festival, Didsbury Arts Festival, MACFEAST, Sheba Arts, Doosti, DIPACT, Travelling Heritage Bureau (latter known as CIWA, a network of international women artists based in the North West) and SWNG. She has completed a PhD in Pharmacy and has three years’ experience working as a teaching assistant in the University of Manchester.

Gloria Saya

Gloria Saya was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and was raised by an Africanist father and mother. She undertook her studies at Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts and is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, trained in multiple disciplines including textiles, sculpture, ceramics, painting and interior design.

As an artist, Gloria is heavily influenced by her African origins, respecting nature, and society. She loves to learn new things and hates waste.

Gloria has run her own studio, worked at Memling Art Gallery and exhibited throughout the country. After moving to the UK, she became an Associate Artist at Chuck Gallery, and exhibited alongside other female artists at exhibitions including the Greater Manchester Police Headquarters, Pankhurst in the Park (Alexandra Park), HOME, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester International Festival, Whitworth Gallery, Zellij Arts, Longsight Library, and the Centre for International Women Artists (CIWA).

As a workshop leader, Gloria was part of the Travelling Heritage Bureau and Girlhood projects working with Housing Associations, SureStart centres, Manchester Gallery and CIWA. She was also a creative project worker with Creative City where she taught women new skills in craft, arts and empowerment. Gloria is currently a board member and studio artist with Global Arts Manchester, where she is involved in many arts projects.