Emergency


Days out for the curious.

Updated 8 February 2024

Emergency is our annual platform for Live Art and contemporary performance — offering a sneak preview of new live work over a single day in Manchester every autumn and now resident at Contact, its seventh home.

Manchester’s 23rd micro-marathon of the bizarre, the bold, and the beautiful took over Contact on Saturday 30 September 2023 with 23 works.

Get a feel for it with 2023’s programme and gallery of images.

Manchester’s annual Live Art / performance platform, Emergency aims to be:
— a free to access public micro-festival and open submission platform;
— an opportunity for artists to meet, show, and peer review work;
— a selection event for a number of small Works Ahead commissions.

We usually expect to present about 20-30 short works throughout the building — so if you would like to take part in what is probably England’s longest-running Live Art event, please check back for our Open Call in summer 2024…

Emergency 23 Call for Proposals has Closed

Artists working in Live Art, contemporary performance, time-based media, and interdisciplinary arts were invited to submit proposals; work can be in any relevant artform/medium, though some live presence is desirable.

Proposal Deadline: Friday 4 August 2023, 5pm

Emergency 23 combines an Afternoon of durational installation, intervention, and limited capacity work; followed by an Evening of short (max 20 mins) show-type pieces of work, works-in-progress, or extracts of longer work.

Emergency 23 presented by Word of Warning + Contact; produced by hÅb; supported by Contact and using public funding by Arts Council England.

Enquiries: emergency@habmcr.org · EmergencyMcr.org · #EmergencyMcr

Past Editions

First held at greenroom in 2000, Emergency also took place at International Anthony Burgess Foundation, BLANKSPACE, Castlefield Gallery, Z-arts & STUN Studio, NIAMOS, before finding a new home at Contact from 2020

Get a feel for it with 2022’s programme & gallery of images, 2021’s programme/gallery, 2019’s programme/gallery, 2018’s programme/gallery.

Emergency 22 presented 23 new works throughout the Contact building on 1 October 2022 — with a daytime of performance installations, one-to-ones, and interventions from Noon — followed by an evening full of short shows from 5pm — see a gallery of images from the day.

Emergency 21 was a socially-distanced live walkthrough event at a newly re-opened Contact on 25 September 2021 — with audiences guided on a one-way journey through the refurbished building, pausing en route in gallery fashion.

Emergency StopGap was a new iteration in Manchester’s NIAMOS on 27 February 2020 — a small informal platform to bridge the gap between gallery + theatre, and to fill the empty months of winter… An informal ‘Thursday Late’ style evening with 13 durational live works + interventions throughout the building — get a feel for it with our gallery of images