Emergency


Days out for the curious.

Updated 6 Jan 2023

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 twenty-second micro-marathon of the bizarre, the bold, and the beautiful took over Contact on Saturday 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.

Overall, Emergency 22 presented 23 new works throughout the building — see a gallery of images from the day.

Probably England’s longest running Live Art event, 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 to be produced by hÅb + Contact.

Emergency 22 presented by Word of Warning + Contact; produced by hÅb + Contact.

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

Past Editions

Get a feel for Emergency with 2021’s programme + gallery of images, 2019’s programme + gallery, and 2018’s programme + gallery.

Emergency 21 was a socially-distanced live walkthrough event at a 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.