MIF25: Balmy Army X Balmy Ukraine
8th July 2025 – 10th July 2025
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Balmy Army, Manchester’s art, activism and mutual care project for young people, is back to heal and help our mental health with a takeover at Contact during MIF25.
With emotional wobbles, messy feelings and sadness about it all. With maximum Joy, all the lols and dignified defiance we’ve been asking ‘What do we deserve?’ and ‘What do we demand?’
Balmy Army is a movement for youth-led mental health started by artist the vacuum cleaner for the 2023 edition of Manchester International Festival.
For the past 18 months, young people impacted by the mental health crisis have been meeting up, making, sharing their visions, checking in, checking out, laughing, sometimes crying and bringing together their demands. In Spring 2025, they’re connecting with young people from Ukraine for a special takeover of Contact.
Join the Balmy Army for three days of art, love, joy, rage, the activism of staying alive and a celebration of Greater Manchester’s wonkiest young people, with a few Ukrainian friends.
Expect informal sharing events – like a wonky relaxed cabaret of poems, song and the next generation of performance art. A take-over of Asylum magazine. Banner drops. A special film screening from Balmy UKRAINE and an open forum for young people to rage, disassociate and be heard (and in which adults just have to listen).
Balmy’s back baby. Back again.
