The Balmy Army Take Over Contact for Manchester International Festival 2025

This week, Contact welcomes The Balmy Army for a bold, unflinching takeover as part of Manchester International Festival 2025. Running 7–18 July, the programme will feature a large-scale banner exhibition and two days of groups, events and workshops led by the Balmy Army themselves. Offering art, activism and mutual care for young people demanding better mental health support.

The Balmy Army is an art and activism project founded in Manchester in 2022 for pissed-off young people who know mental health care should be simpler, kinder and easier to access. Using art as their activism, they’ve brought together artists, radical dreamers, disability justice organisers and anyone trying to cope in a broken system. Since launching, they’ve staged exhibitions, performances, films, zines, podcasts and interventions for Manchester International Festival 2023, Whitechapel Gallery, Contact and more.

The project was founded by UK-based artist and activist The Vacuum Cleaner, known for candid, provocative and playful work. For over a decade, he’s collaborated with young people, health professionals and communities to challenge how mental health is understood, treated and experienced.

This takeover at Contact is an invitation to listen, reflect and stand in solidarity with The Balmy Army as they imagine and make real a world where care is strategy, love is a foundation and mental health support leaves no one behind.

Can't make it in person or missed the event? See the banner and The Balmy Army demands below...