Manchester gets SICK! again

A biennial festival of the arts that faces up to the complexities of mental and physical health might seem an unusual pitch but the SICK! Festival reflects the health needs of Greater Manchester’s diverse population in a groundbreaking way.

Furthermore, it gives senior NHS leaders like me a unique opportunity to work with artists and communities in and around the country’s only devolved health and care system.

The relationship between the NHS and the arts has long been there. It has informed how we design and decorate our buildings, with pioneers such as Chelsea and Westminster, leading the way.

Arts and drama therapists are valued allied health professionals contributing to treatment and recovery. The arts have informed how we treat mental health conditions and care for people with dementia.

Pablo Picasso said: “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” In Greater Manchester, we believe that the arts can help us positively promote good health; that they can work alongside other contributors such as social engagement, physical activity and good quality work & volunteering, to enable people to experience wellbeing and maximise their potential contribution to society.

The arts can also help us tackle inequality by giving voice to individuals and groups who are otherwise marginalised in the decisions about allocation of scarce resources. 

That is what SICK! Festival 2019 is all about. Funded by Arts Council England and philanthropic partners, it takes place across Greater Manchester and presents an outstanding international arts programme, weaving in perspectives from researchers, clinical practitioners, public health professionals, charities and those with lived experience of the issues addressed.

Remarkable performances and artworks

Themes are explored through many art forms – dance, theatre, film, spoken word – and through discussion and debate.

This year’s festival features a number of new commissions, performances and installations drawn together to explore the question, “What is the value of a life?”

Focusing on disability, end of life and young people’s mental health it’s a bold programme that opens itself out to a broader cross-section of society as possible by trailing a unique “pay between scheme” allowing audiences of all incomes to pay what they feel they can afford to attend the performances, installations and events over the course of the three-week festival. 

There have been a number of highlights across this year’s festival that show a different way of doing things.

Arts and drama therapists are valued allied health professionals contributing to treatment and recovery. The arts have informed how we treat mental health conditions and care for people with dementia

In relation to public health, Mats Staub’s installation Death and Birth In My Life at The Whitworth has been developed with clinicians from the intensive care unit at Manchester Royal Infirmary and invites the audience to listen in on a series of intimate conversations about the most moving and existential experiences in life.

It’s a remarkable work centre-stage in one of Manchester’s most respected galleries. It also ties in very closely with one of our devolved city’s health priorities – to make sure every person and their family gets the death they would like.

Greater Manchester’s vision for end-of-life care has been developed emphasising choice, including place of care and death, focusing on people‘s individual preferences as well as aiming to make people more comfortable talking about death, dying and bereavement.

At the other end of the artistic spectrum, An Irresponsible Father’s Guide to Parenting by North-West based comedian Laurence Clark at The Lowry Theatre, Salford gives a brutally honest, charming and funny account of what it’s really like to be a disabled parent.

Bringing challenging art out to people

To me it’s vital that a festival like SICK! Festival is not all held behind the cloistered doors of theatre spaces and galleries.

Graphic Encounters, developed with Manchester Metropolitan University and the LGBT Foundation, reveals the experiences of women in Manchester through a series of illustrated narratives presented in poster-sites across Greater Manchester’s Metrolink network.

Artworks by British and Finnish artists explore the lives of four women facing particular challenges to their health and wellbeing in the city. It’s really important that exhibitions such as this reach out of the confines of galleries and theatres. Bringing challenging art out to people across the Metrolink network does just that. At no cost to them. 

This year’s festival features a number of new commissions, performances and installations drawn together to explore the question, “What is the value of a life?”

The festival presents and commissions powerful, innovative and engaging work by artists from across Greater Manchester, the UK and the world. It takes vital conversations into the heart of the communities where the subjects matter most as well as to major cultural venues.

SICK! Festival has grown and evolved since 2013, emerging from reflections of the festival directors’ lives and the lives of people around them to embrace issues of wider significance for communities and deep importance for individuals.

It is guided constantly by those communities and individuals, who ground the work in real-life experience, personal knowledge and immense understanding of the sensitivities of emotive issues. All too often these subjects are kept away from public view and debate.

SICK! exists to change that.