Haphazard 2026

→ artists · programme · entry · access · about · credits  Updated 7 July 2026

Presented by Word of Warning + Z-arts

Haphazard 2026 is a free afternoon for the curious of all ages — see our artists’ images. A Live Art takeover of Z-arts on Saturday 11 July from 1pm to 4pm. Turn up at any time, come and go as you please… and expect the unexpected!

Content Warnings: some works involve interaction and/or participation; specific warnings listed here.

Atrium
Shynara Nygmetova & Zixuan Hong · The Televerse

A distant universe made entirely from paper wishes and shaped by you.
Send messages through a tube system to the floor below, launch paper planes from the balcony toward a giant target, and hunt for hidden objects across the installation using telescopes and search cards. Every contribution becomes part of the landscape.

Founded by Shynara & Zixuan, Tilekxin is an emerging London-based participatory collective; The Televerse continues their ongoing interest in collective authorship, imaginative play, and the emotional possibilities of shared physical space.
Shynara is a graphic designer from Kazakhstan with a background in visual communication, working across image, language, and systems to shape how people understand and experience the world around them.
Zixuan is a spatial designer from China whose architectural thinking translates into environments that guide how people move, feel, and relate to one another.
Together their practice spans participatory installation, community engagement, and multimedia work, always placing the audience as collaborator rather than observer.

website · Insta @shynara.nb @kkakoku1 @tilek.xin

Roaming
Hyde N Seek · Hyde N Seek Goes on Holiday

A drag clown trying to be a redcoat. A three-hour shuffled playlist of holiday disco bangers.
Hello! My name is Hyde N Seek — drag clown, monster, and aspiring redcoat — and I am the entertainments team. I’m going to be here all afternoon doing the Cha Cha Slide and the Macarena and YMCA and loads more. I don’t know in what order. It’s a surprise. Even for me. If you know the dance (and I think you do) you’re doing it with me.

Hyde N Seek is the drag persona of PHOBIA, the drag creature of Finch, a regular person who is currently developing their solo show Mistoffelees, or The Fear of Magic. Their work focuses on identity, childhood, and what it means to perform.

Insta @thatcreaturephobia

Roaming
Matt Girling · Together Heads

Things are always more beautiful and strange when you collaborate with others.
A walking sculpture that celebrates the beauty and strange nature of relationships and family bonds — stirring up a contemporary folklore by animating a pot plant gargoyle hiding in the garden of a West Yorkshire dementia home.

Matt is an artist, prop maker, and printmaker living and working in NW England, particularly interested in process-based art working, workshop facilitation, and interactive art.

mattgirlingartist.tumblr.com · Insta @_pondwater_

Roaming
Scrapheap Collective · One-Meter Chain Reaction

A participatory performance that explores how movement and behaviour are transmitted through collective imitation and shifting roles of leading and following. Participants form a loose chain, maintaining spatial distance while responding to and transforming each other’s actions as they move through space. The work generates evolving relational structures between bodies, attention, and environment, and this iteration continues a site-responsive approach through a new spatial and public context.

Initiated & led by Dongting Huang, working through Scrapheap Collective. Collaborators: Guangyi Shen, Yiwen Zhang

Dongting Huang (DongDong) is a Chinese-born, London-based artist and multidisciplinary creator working across moving image, performance, installation, and painting. Their practice investigates how perception, participation, and material processes co-produce shifting systems of meaning. Through the use of trace, repetition, and transformation, their work constructs environments in which stability dissolves and form remains in flux. Their practice engages the body as a relational node within dynamic material and sensory systems, where it is continuously shaped through interaction. Increasingly, their work approaches participation as a generative condition, where meaning and form emerge through interactions between human and non-human elements. These processes remain open-ended, unfolding through ongoing involvement, contingency, and transformation.

scrapheapcollective.com · Insta @scrapheapcollective

Café
Lesya Tyminska · Preen

Flutter into a warped, chaotic world‚ where reality is twisted, and nothing is quite what it seems. In this visceral exploration through movement, unraveling the fragile threads of beauty, perception, and identity. In disturbing the fabric of what’s familiar, we dare to imagine a world shaped not by expectation, but by truth.

Floating between the north and south, Lesya is a multi-disciplinary movement artist with a passion for the weird and wonderful. Rooted in contemporary dance, she brings physical theatre, character work, and (contact) improvisation into her choreographic practice, often exploring socio-political themes through humour. She feels most at home in unconventional spaces, having explored these throughout her freelance career across live performance, film, and musical collaboration. Working now predominantly in community dance‚ a central passion in her practice‚ her recent role at Cheshire Dance allows her to deepen this work alongside a supportive and inspiring organisation.

Insta @lesya.tym

Theatre
In Between Time · We Are Warriors

Described as ‘a wonderground’, this is an immersive sound and light installation that creates glowing constellations of voice, memory, and light. A layered soundscape of whispers, breaths, sighs and lullabies surround the audience. Created with 130 women, girls, non-binary and trans femmes, the work explores visibility, resilience, and how much stronger we are when we come together. You’re invited to move freely through the space, adding your own light to the installation. A participatory experience that calls for a fairer, safer world through shared presence and testimony.

Helen Cole is old and has worked really hard and just wants to work with nice people now. She creates large-scale, immersive, and socially engaged artworks that sit at the intersection of performance, installation, sound, and participatory practice. Her work often transforms unusual or overlooked spaces‚ such as caves, tunnels, forests, streets, and civic buildings, into sensory environments that audiences physically enter and experience from within. These works typically combine soundscapes, light, testimony, and live or participatory elements, inviting audiences not just to watch but to move through, contribute to, and shape the experience. A consistent focus in her practice is voice and visibility, particularly amplifying experiences that are often underrepresented or unheard, and creating collective, public-facing works that explore equity, care, and transformation.

inbetweentime.co.uk · Insta @inbetweentime

First floor, Activity Space
Liv Loupe · What Shape is Your Gait?

Walking in a Straight Line is OUT! Walking in squares or triangles is IN!
Do you wish you could twirl your way from one place to another. Or hop from cobblestone to cobblestone? You’re not alone. There isn’t just one way to walk, there are hundreds! Maybe thousands! Come explore new and fun ways to get from Point A to Point B. The only limits are your own imagination.

Liv is a multi-disciplinary artist studying Contemporary Performance at Manchester School of Theatre. Before moving to the UK, she taught dance and drama to young children. She aspires to create theatre that both inspires creativity and fosters empathy in her audiences.

olivialoupe.wixsite.com/liv-loupe · Insta @livlooptyloop

First floor, Playspace
Claire Leith & Lucy Fegan · We Once Lived Here

A live sculptural installation exploring memory, growing up, what we carry with us — and leave behind — when we leave the places that shaped us. Using unfired clay, the artists recreate the homes they grew up in and place them into water, where they gradually soften, bend, collapse, and dissolve over time. You’re invited to make and add your own small clay responses to the homes, contributing to a shared landscape that shifts and changes across the afternoon. The work reflects on nostalgia, belonging — and asks what it means to let go and how memory shifts when the structures attached to it begin to change.

Claire is a live artist working with material-led processes to explore memory, home, and displacement. Her work often uses unstable materials such as ice and clay to create live, shifting environments that unfold over time. Her work has been nominated for the Off West End Award in Innovation and has been performed internationally. Alongside her performance practice, she has worked as a ceramicist for the past six years, developing a tactile approach to making that informs her sculptural work.
Lucy is a ceramic artist from Salford, based in London, producing hand-thrown and handmade stoneware pots. She began working with clay in 2022 and her practice centres on functional ware alongside sculptural pieces, often celebrating raw clay surfaces with subtle, playful accents of colour. Each piece is carefully crafted for daily use and quiet enjoyment, encouraging a slower pace and a deeper appreciation of the small, in-between moments of life. She is currently exhibiting her sculptures at HOME’s Manchester Open 2026.

clairesleith.wixsite.com/claireleith · Insta @claire_leith @l.ucyblue

First floor, Playspace
Lizzy Margereson · Becoming Dog

Ever wondered what it’s like to be a dog? Here’s a glimpse into what it might be like. Using sound, smell, and touch, you’re invited to step into the shoes of humananity’s best friend — what does human language sound like through dog ears? What secret sounds can dogs hear that humans cannot? And how does smell become the strongest sense?
Exploring themes of radical empathy and kinship with the animal world, the work asks “what is it like to walk in another animal’s shoes?”

Lizzy is a performance artist and maker. She works solo and in collaboration nationally and internationally, creating pieces and experiences that centre audiences of all ages!

emargereson.wixsite.com/lizmargereson · Insta @lizzyisaclown

First floor, Artists Studio
Miranda Prag · The Time Machine

Do you ever wish you could speed up time, slow it down, or escape the clock altogether? Join the mysterious Cosmic Witch as she deconstructs and rebuilds her own perception of time — and yours! — one piece at a time. When the machine is complete, stay and watch the magic happen. A playful, surreal, and surprising exploration of time and the way it shapes our lives, and an invitation to see time differently.

Designed and built in collaboration with Tom Mills. Originally supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Miranda is a theatre maker, artist, performer, and boat dweller based in Lancashire. She makes multidisciplinary performance that has been presented nationally and internationally. Her work looks at big themes on a minute scale, unpacking the building blocks of everyday life and questioning concepts that are often taken for granted. Her shows are funny, surreal, and often unexpected.

mirandaprag.co.uk · Insta @miranda_praaaaaagh

Image: Miranda Prag (appearing in Haphazard 2026) by Joe Twigg
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