Join the creative team behind our Cultural Bridge project for an artist panel discussion exploring the insights from our international partnership. The discussion will delve into the challenges of international residencies for marginalised communities, and discuss the relationship of queer and disabled communities in the arts. Visual art curator, writer, researcher, educator and advocate, Dr Jane Morrow, will lead the discussion.

University of Atypical and COVEN Berlin have been working in partnership as part of the 2025-26 Cultural Bridge programme. During their residencies, artists Husk Bennett (Belfast) and Chris Yohei Tokunaga (Berlin) co-created new work together with d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, and queer communities in both cities. The culminating work, Sick in the City, is queer and disabled-led, and rooted in taking back public space for bodies and identities which are frequently excluded or made invisible.

This project is funded by Cultural Bridge, which celebrates bilateral artistic partnerships between the United Kingdom and Germany, through the collaboration between Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council, Creative Scotland, Fonds Soziokultur, Goethe-Institut London and Wales Arts International / Arts Council of Wales. 

In this personal and intimate film, writer-director Elizabeth Sankey uses her own story of being admitted to a psychiatric ward after the birth of her son to explore the unexpected yet compelling connections between perinatal mental health and the history and portrayal of witches in western society and pop culture. Using clips of cinematic witches to illustrate her own experience and those of other women, alongside interviews with medical professionals and academics, Sankey concocts a potion that brims with courage, compassion, and healing insight.

The screening (90 minutes) will be followed by a short Q&A about the themes of the documentary with Aisling McCormick and Dr Elspeth Vischer.

Aisling (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and researcher from Dublin, based in Belfast. An experienced performer, creator and educator, her work as an independent artist encompasses choreography, choral direction, singing, movement and wellbeing. Her more recent choreographic focus has explored themes of maternal identity. In 2025 she completed PhD research exploring the intersection of dance and perinatal health and wellbeing.

Elspeth is a filmmaker, writer and project coordinator based in Belfast. Elspeth runs the production company Vish Films and specialises in non-fiction and experimental work that centres counter-hegemonic perspectives, particularly queer and intersectional feminist frameworks. To date Elspeth has had films screened at international festivals including Docs Ireland. Elspeth completed a Creative Practice PhD at Queen’s University in 2023.

Rapture and Repulsion is a QueerCrip performance piece in development, written from interviews with d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists and activists. Crips talking sex and sexualities, from the good, the bad and don’t get outta bed! This is a script-in-hand reading of new work on sex and disability, up front and centre and not to be missed.

Julie McNamara (Mack) is a QueerCrip, working class Butch Dyke, and a prolific playwright, theatre and filmmaker and disability activist. Deni Francis is a mixed race brown, professional actor and writer and an Indian/Irish child of colonialism, working class, lesbian, femme, feminist, activist.

Content warning: adult themes, conversations about sex, sadomasochism, tantra, rage, and revolution.

As part of Bounce 2025 you can also hear JulieMac talk more about their work and disability arts on Friday 3 October at 3:30 pm: Disability-Led Queeruptions in the Mainstream, in the Ledger Studio

Open Arts Community Choir, winners of the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society’s Inspiration Award 2025, is celebrating 25 years!

The choir will perform songs from their incredibly successful history under St Comgall’s atmospheric atrium. This will be a beautiful evening of music and memories from throughout the years, and is guaranteed to uplift and inspire.

Sick in the City combines elements of socially engaged practice with audio-visual technologies for a live performance reclaiming public space in Belfast city centre. The performance uses audio-reactive visuals and live broadcasting methods to shift between levels of contemporary culture, disability justice, abstraction, written word, hedonism, revolt, political-response, nonsense, life-experience, emotions, emojis, and absurdity. Explore a tense vulnerability between the analogue and accidental, and witness the varied and acutely plethoric range of interpretations between audience and artist.

Sick in the City was developed by artists Husk Bennett (Belfast) and Chris Yohei Tokunaga (Berlin), in partnership with University of Atypical and COVEN Berlin, following a series of community co-creation and consultation workshops, and residencies in Belfast and Berlin as part of the 2025-26 Cultural Bridge programme.

This project is funded by Cultural Bridge, which celebrates bilateral artistic partnerships between the United Kingdom and Germany, through  collaboration between Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council, Creative Scotland, Fonds Soziokultur, Goethe-Institut London and Wales Arts International / Arts Council of Wales.

If you are interested in learning more about our Cultural Bridge project and the relationship of queer and disabled communities in the arts, you can also book for our free talk on Sunday 5 October at 11:30 am in Accidental Theatre and online: From Berlin to Belfast: International Perspectives on Disabled-Led Co-Creation.

Strap yourself in for an afternoon of boisterous and bonkers physicality! Experience an exhilarating showcase of dance and physical theatre from the Rogue Encounters physical theatre ensemble, drawing on their acclaimed projects ‘Physical Graffiti’, ‘All Doors Open’, and ‘Urban Species’.

This vibrant 40-minute performance celebrates the creative voices of young people through six musical sequences bursting with energy, humour, and heart. The ensemble explores the beauty of diversity with innocence, exuberance, and unity through joyful movement and bold choreography. 

Choreography by disabled artist and Rogue Encounters Assistant Director, Billí Mills, mentored by Rogue Encounters Artistic Director, David Calvert.

(This performance was previously listed in the programme as ‘Artistic Mentor’.)