Jo Mangan is a Festival Director and multi-disciplinary artist.

Jo founded the SPACE Programme - Ireland’s longest running multi-disciplinary international artists residency with a current focus on AI and Immersive Technology. Running since 2008, it now has an annual home in Paris at the Centre Cultural Irlandais. She also designed and delivered Creation 21/22, an international Artist’s residency in Catalonia and Ireland, and has been Tutor for the International Performing Arts Network (IETM) in Berlin and Italy.

As recent Director/CEO of Carlow Arts Festival, she pioneered Outdoor and Digital work including VR Cinema and created a Virtual Reality Festival Campus. Other curation work includes the Prague Quadrennial Design Exhibition - PQ2019 for Ireland, Digital Consultant for the Arts Council’s Brightening Air, International Programmer for Limerick National City of Culture including the largest event of the year - Royal de Luxe, and design of the annual Theatre Forum conference. She also founded and curated the BIG House Festival at Castletown House, and was director of the Bram Stoker Festival. She has served on many boards, including Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts and currently The Gate Theatre Dublin and INY Festival (Ireland/New York).

As an independent practitioner and Artistic Director of The Performance Corporation she focuses on the creation of Theatre, Opera, and Immersive Tech experiences as well as developing artists residencies.

Recent work for The Performance Corporation includes MoCap Experiments at Dublin Theatre Festival 2023, Emperor 101, (Live/Virtual Reality) presented at Dublin Theatre Festival, SXSW in Austin Texas, and at LP360 in Vancouver as well as accessible worldwide via headsets; Disappearing Islands, a site-specific dance/opera work on a tidal pool on the west coast of Ireland; and The Dead (Opera) at the Gaiety Theatre, and on tour nationally. Selected independent directing work includes 5 films for Irish National Opera’s 20 Shots of Opera, 72 Hour Lost Weekend and Woman in the Machine (film, live performance and installation) as part of Brightening Air in the Braun Factory Carlow, 14 Voices from the Bloody Field (Abbey Theatre), Out of the Ordinary – VR Opera (Irish National Opera), and Bingo Wings for Fidget Feet Dance Co. She also worked with The Mill over the last 2 years on their pioneering Mavens programme for female playwrights.

Jo is recognised as a speaker and chair internationally. Recent engagements include SXSW Austin Texas, Jeunesses Musicales International, Forum des lnstituts Culturels Etrangers a Paris (FICEP), and Bristol Digital Games Lab. Awarded the Clore Cultural Leadership Fellowship this saw her take up roles in the Barbican London, and the Department of Arts in Dublin. Other awards include multiple Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards and the prestigious European Fedora Digital Prize for Opera.