SICK Festival

SICK Festival Lives Reimagined Through Art

Confronting the physical, mental and social challenges that we face in our individual and collective lives, the festival will present an outstanding international arts programme, weaving in perspectives from academic research, clinical practitioners, public health professionals, charities and those with lived experience of the issues we address.

This is not a festival as usual.This is a pulse check.Festival CPR: Beat One is the start of a new rhythm.SICK! is shift...
13/04/2026

This is not a festival as usual.
This is a pulse check.

Festival CPR: Beat One is the start of a new rhythm.

SICK! is shifting from a festival to a year-round movement — Creative Resuscitation — where audiences become creators, and art becomes a space for care, challenge and connection.

Across May, we’re testing bold ideas through performance, workshops, conversations and shared experiences.

This is a live experiment.

A space to collapse what no longer serves, prototype what comes next, and reimagine the future together.

📍 Across Greater Manchester
📅 6–30 May
👉🏽 Explore the full programme https://www.sickproductions.org

Some events are free. Some need booking. All are part of the same experiment.

👇🏾 Featured in this image

🎥 (I) MISS AMERICA (2026)

Girls are safe in the USA… until they’re born.

A striking installation and screening by Hannah Ballou & Peter Case, confronting bodily autonomy, power and post-Roe America.

Performed by: Georgia Triana-Ballou
Cinematography: Claire Nolan
Photography: Jemima Yong
Set Design: Peter Case
Editing: Claire Nolan
Music: Flint Kids ‘Day Nil’
Hair: Gunel Kelly
Make Up: Dani Ferrarezi

Free. No booking required. Just come in.

📍 Contact, Manchester
📅 Fri 29 May (6–7:45pm) / Sat 30 May (4–7:45pm)

Join the first Beat.
Help build the rhythm.

CALLING MID-CAREER ARTISTS🌍 International Arts Development OpportunitySTATUS LAB is a new international creative pathway...
03/04/2026

CALLING MID-CAREER ARTISTS

🌍 International Arts Development Opportunity

STATUS LAB is a new international creative pathway from SICK!, developed and delivered with Lowry (UK), Project Arts Centre (Ireland), Gessnerallee (Zürich) and Kaserne (Basel).

Designed for mid-career, socially engaged artists (8+ years’ experience), this programme offers space to rethink, challenge and expand your practice alongside artists, communities and partners across Europe.

⚡ 6 artists (2 per country)
⚡ 3 countries (UK, Ireland, Switzerland)
⚡ 11-month shared process

Open to UK and Ireland-based artists only.
Swiss artists will be recruited separately.

Fee: £4,725 (UK) / €5,580 (Ireland)
Support: Travel, accommodation and per diems covered for international residencies

Work across Greater Manchester, Dublin and Zürich/Basel, engaging with communities, activists, policymakers and educators to create work that responds to the present moment.

📅 Deadline: 27 April 2026

🔗 Full details & application pack: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mqqmnsal3ZVX1cnd64jrBXCn9irQlA-7/view

Supported by The Arts Council (Ireland) and Pro Helvetia.

If you’re ready to take your practice further, this opportunity is for you.

📢This is not a festival as usual. This is a pulse check 🩺Today we launch Festival CPR: Beat One, a new phase our evoluti...
20/03/2026

📢This is not a festival as usual. This is a pulse check 🩺

Today we launch Festival CPR: Beat One, a new phase our evolution from a biennial festival to a year-round movement. 🙌🏾

Framed through Creative Resuscitation, this shift reimagines how art is made, shared, and sustained. It moves beyond traditional festival formats to create ongoing spaces where artists, participants and partners can test ideas, collaborate, and build new futures together.

Beat One marks the first pulse in a cycle of bold experiments.

Stay tuned 👀 for a slow unpicking of what’s to come and more announcements too! 👉🏽 Join the first beat. Help build the rhythm. Reimagine lives through art, together.

Discover the evolving programme: www.sickproductions.org

We’re ‘stoked’ to reveal the next show in our evolving Festival CPR programme…✨ PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLDBy In Bed With My...
04/03/2026

We’re ‘stoked’ to reveal the next show in our evolving Festival CPR programme…

✨ PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD
By In Bed With My Brother ✨

Presented in partnership with our friends Contact.

Ridiculed then revered, The Shaggs were once called the best worst band in the world. Now their strange and legendary story gets the biopic it never asked for.

Part tribute act.
Part feminist reclamation.
Part rambling flight of ideas.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD dives into fate, free will, power, patriarchy, band t-shirts, daddy issues — and the eternal question:

Who gets to decide whether you're a legend or a loser?

Expect questionable mime, high-intensity dance, awkward crowd work, stage combat, cheap wigs, jump scares and a surprisingly well-trained actor.

Rock ’n’ roll history gets twisted into a sticky, sweaty, searing rebellion.

📍 Contact, Manchester
🗓 29–30 May 2026
⏰ 8pm-9pm
🎟 Tickets + details - https://contactmcr.com/events/philosophy-of-the-world

This show forms part of SICK!’s Festival CPR programme - a living, breathing reimagining of what a festival can be, unfolding over time through performance, participation and collective care.

🫀 More announcements coming soon.

We’re continuing a bold new chapter for SICK! Festival — and we’re thrilled to reveal the next show to be presented as p...
09/02/2026

We’re continuing a bold new chapter for SICK! Festival — and we’re thrilled to reveal the next show to be presented as part of our evolving Creative Resuscitation - Festival CPR programme.

✨ Second Trimester
By Krishna Istha & Geetha Shankar
Directed by Milli Bhatia

A cinematic, Bollywood-inspired epic family saga — Second Trimester brings trans performance artist Krishna Istha and his mother Geetha Shankar together on stage to confront pregnancy, loss, gender, and the weight of inherited memories.

Love triangles. Missing people. A pregnant son. One stage. Two generations. Endless drama.

The anticipated second show in a trilogy, following the critically acclaimed First Trimester:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Addictive” — What’s On Stage
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “An antidote of the age” — Irish Times

📍 27 & 28 May
📍 , Salford
🎟️ Tickets via Lowry — https://thelowry.com/whats-on/second-trimester-q5mt

This show forms part of SICK!’s Festival CPR programme — a living, breathing reimagining of what a festival can be, unfolding over time through performance, participation and collective care.

🫀 More announcements — and more ways to get involved — coming next month. This is only the beginning 👀

💥 Second Trimester is a Making Waves Major Commission by Battersea Arts Centre - BAC. Made possible with funding by Arts Council England and Cockayne 10th Anniversary Grants for the Arts. SICK! is delighted to have also co-commissioned this performance alongside , Cambridge Junction, The Lowry & Marlborough Productions.


***rArt

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Show credits:
Director:
Creative Producer:
Set & Costume:
Dramaturg: �
Video Design:
Creative Coder:
Sound Design: �
Composer:
Script Dramaturg: �
Well-being Support: .c �
Artist Access Support: �
Marketing & Branding: �
Production Manager: Benji Huntrods �
Technical Stage Manager: .fauxx �
PR: Joy Parkinson
Show image:
Photos: Emily Drake
Hair & make-up:

✈️ AUDITIONS ANNOUNCEMENT ✨We’re delighted to support our brilliant friends at North West Theatre Arts Company, operatin...
09/02/2026

✈️ AUDITIONS ANNOUNCEMENT ✨

We’re delighted to support our brilliant friends at North West Theatre Arts Company, operating from the heart of North Manchester, as they open their search for the next company members for their forthcoming production of COME FROM AWAY ❤️

Presented as part of SICK! Creative Resuscitation – Festival CPR.

This is an ensemble-led, joyful and deeply human musical — and they want you involved.

🎭 OPEN AUDITIONS
📅 Sunday 15 February
🕑 2.00pm – 6.00pm
✨ Performers are invited to express interest in joining the full company
🎶 A chance to be part of something truly special with an inclusive, community-driven theatre family

📩 Audition slots must be booked in advance
Email to register your interest: [email protected]
⚠️ Spaces are limited — don’t wait!

✨Come From Away✨ tells the true story of thousands of people from across the world stranded far from home, and the small community who chose care, generosity and radical welcome in a moment of global crisis. It’s a joyful, ensemble-led musical about connection across borders, cultures and difference.

That story sits at the heart of SICK! Festival CPR. We believe stories of people whose circumstances bring them to other places don’t belong “somewhere else” they belong right here in North Manchester. This production brings global experiences into a local context, creating space to think about empathy, belonging and collective care through theatre.

📆 Performance dates:
Tuesday 19 – Saturday 23 May
🕢 7.30pm evenings + 🕝 2.30pm Saturday matinee
🎟️ Booking now open — https://www.nwtac.co.uk/come-from-away

Come be part of it ✨

🎓🎨 We’re proud to be partnering on the Q***r & Trans Healthcare + Creativity PhD Studentships at The University of Manch...
05/02/2026

🎓🎨 We’re proud to be partnering on the Q***r & Trans Healthcare + Creativity PhD Studentships at The University of Manchester, recognising creative practice as rigorous, ethical and essential research within health and care.

Hosted by the Faculty of Humanities, these fully funded doctoral awards support interdisciplinary, practice-based research rooted in q***r and trans lived experience, community knowledge and creative methodologies, where academia, culture and civic life collide.

This ethos runs through SICK!’s active Creative Resuscitation model and our upcoming CPR Festival programming, where art functions as live research, interrupting, extending and deepening conversations around health, embodiment, care and survival.

Within CPR, works including EXXY (Dan Daw Creative Projects) and Second Trimester (Krishna Istha & Geetha Shankar), operate not as case studies, but as critical interventions, highlighting how performance generates knowledge, affect and ethical insight.

We’re delighted to be part of this partnering on this new programme alongside George House Trust, LGBT Foundation, The Sunday Boys & Factory International, supporting research that refuses false boundaries between art, care and scholarship. ❤️

🔗 Find further detail of how to apply: https://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/funding/list-of-awards/q***randtranshealthcareandcreativitystudentships/

& more on shows announced as part of our Festival CPR programme:

🔗Second Trimester: https://thelowry.com/whats-on/second-trimester-q5mt

🔗EXXY: https://thelowry.com/whats-on/dan-daw-exxy-5xyn

💫WE ARE RECRUITING!Join the SICK! Team as our Executive Producer!Lead ambitious, values-driven work connecting art, heal...
13/01/2026

💫WE ARE RECRUITING!

Join the SICK! Team as our Executive Producer!

Lead ambitious, values-driven work connecting art, health & social equity 🌍

This is a role with real agency, shaping festivals, international partnerships and creative health programmes.

🔗 See Job Pack: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_GugeuiogicJiT3JfRkAFo9MdNtaHfW3/view
⏰ Apply by 2 March 2026



Images:

Top left: Louise Orwin’s Famehungry, SICK! Festival 2024. Photo Credit: Alfie Austin.

Top middle: Dan Daw Creative Projects, EXXY, a SICK! 2026 co-commission. Photo credit: Hugo Glendinning

Top right: Merel Smitt, The Launderette Sessions. SICK! Festival 2024. Photo Credit: Sanne Donders

Bottom left: I AM by Allie Crewe, commissioned by SICK! Festival 2022. Photo Credit: Joel Goodman.

Bottom middle: Sustainable Travel Agency by Jenny Gaskell, SICK! Festival 2024. Photo Credit: SICK!

Bottom right: Company Chameleon, Witness This, SICK! Festival 2022. Photo Credit: Claire Angel.

💥 We’re kicking off a bold new chapter for SICK! Festival!We’re thrilled to announce the first show of SICK! Festival 20...
07/11/2025

💥 We’re kicking off a bold new chapter for SICK! Festival!

We’re thrilled to announce the first show of SICK! Festival 2026 - EXXY by Dan DawCreative Projects — presented in partnership with our brilliant friends at The Lowry

🔥 EXXY (Australian slang for, ‘that’s expensive, mate’) takes us on an epic and tender journey back to where Dan Daw began – working class, with very little.

We’re proud to be co-commissioners of this new work alongside incredible international partners, marking the start of an exciting new approach to how we deliver the festival — one rooted in Creative Resuscitation (CPR): a living, breathing reimagining of what a festival can be.

This is just the beginning… more announcements on our new CPR-inspired festival programme are coming soon 👀

🎟️ Tickets on sale now via The Lowry – https://thelowry.com/whats-on/dan-daw-exxy-5xyn

Image by Hugo Glendinning

***rArt

⚡IMPROV FOR SOCIAL CHANGE WORKSHOP ⚡Join Lee Simpson (Improbable) and Flo O’Mahony (Zoo Co.), for a free workshop explor...
07/11/2025

⚡IMPROV FOR SOCIAL CHANGE WORKSHOP ⚡

Join Lee Simpson (Improbable) and Flo O’Mahony (Zoo Co.), for a free workshop exploring how improvisation can be used as a radical tool for creative leadership and social change.

This workshop invites artists and creatives to discover how improvisation can inspire transformation — on stage, off stage, and within communities often excluded from traditional theatre spaces.

🗓 Thursday 20 November
📍 Contact, Manchester
🎟 Free – book via:
https://contactmcr.com/events/improv-for-social-change

Presented by Contact in partnership with SICK!, alongside Zoo Co and Improbable’s , showing at Contact 19–22 November.

✨ ANNOUNCEMENT ✨ Beyond Survival: International Time Travel — Commissioned Artists Announced! We’re thrilled to reveal...
04/11/2025

✨ ANNOUNCEMENT ✨

Beyond Survival: International Time Travel — Commissioned Artists Announced!

We’re thrilled to reveal the four artists commissioned for Beyond Survival: International Time Travel, developed with our partners Finnish Institute UK+IRE, ILME Collective, and Oulu2026 – European Capital of Culture.

This international collaboration connects communities in Manchester and Oulu through art, dialogue, and imagination — inviting us to explore migration, industry, and sustainability in bold, unexpected ways.


Meet the artists shaping this journey:

✨ Niki Colclough — invites us to think with rivers, connecting Manchester and Oulu through the emotional and ecological histories of water and industry.

✨Michael Betteridge — transforms q***r stories of migration and belonging into a powerful choral soundscape between two cities.

✨afshan d’souza-lodhi — leads The Aunties, a storytelling project weaving together migrant women and non-binary people to imagine futures grounded in care and resistance.

✨Nina Rantala — explores planetary connection and shared industrial heritage through participatory sculpture that brings us closer to the Earth.

These new commissions mark the next stage in a long-standing partnership between SICK! Festival and the Finnish Institute UK+IRE, celebrating the power of socially engaged art to reimagine fairer, healthier futures.

The commissioned works will premiere at SICK! Festival, Manchester and Oulu2026, European Capital of Culture.

We look forward to sharing more about each artist’s journey, and how people in Manchester and Oulu can get involved in the creation of these new works.

🙏 Huge thanks to all the artists who proposed ideas — the standard was exceptional, and decisions were far from easy! We look forward to continuing conversations as we open up more opportunity to support artists to make work that transcends borders.

17/10/2025

🎭✨ We’re so excited to team up with Contact to bring Zoo Co & Improbable’s Perfect Show for Rachel to Manchester!

Rachel, a theatre-loving, enigmatic, learning-disabled 35 year-old is in charge — literally. She runs the show with a button. Expect chaos, cabaret, biscuits, and a whole lot of heart 💖

🌈 Relaxed as standard.
💬 Creative captioning.
🤟 BSL-interpreted moments.

📅 19–22 Nov
📍 Contact, Manchester
🎟️ Book now 👉 https://contactmcr.com/events/perfect-show-for-rachel

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