The Balmy Army – Introduction
Ever been told to ask for help? Only to be told help wasn’t available.
Ever been told you’ve got a problem, but something inside you says, hmmm am not quite sure it’s JUST me?
Ever get the feeling young people’s mental health care could be so much better?
Enough excuses. We aren’t the problem.
The Balmy Army is an art, activism and mutual care project for pissed-off people.
For young people struggling with your mental health, your friends and families, and those working in mental health who are on your side. Our aim is to work together across Greater Manchester (now the whole of England) to imagine and make real a simpler, kinder, easier to access mental health support and care, that Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services are currently prevented from doing.
Begun in 2022 young people, artists, madpride organisers, radical dreamers, disability justice inspired doers and everyone else trying to cope have come together. What do they want? Mental health support that works. When do they want it? About 15 years ago…
Balmy Army is a long term project mixing art, activism and mutual care.
Message from ‘the vacuum cleaner’ about why he wants to do this:
“I went through mental health care as a young person, it was crap then and it’s crap now. Nothing seems to get better, however much those in charge say it has. I was in an adolescent hospital 20 years ago, has the mental health care got any better since then? Not enough, let’s put it that way. (I totally acknowledge there are some cool people doing good shit in young peoples mental health care – I’m not attacking them, we need you sooooo bad).
How many more excuses should we accept?
I want to work with YOU to imagine, dream up and then make real the mental health care you desire, that your friends deserve and that adults just don’t seem to be able to give you.
Enough excuses.
I’m starting a long term project called Balmy Army. It’s part art, part activism and part mutual care project that sets out to educate those in power and inform care-givers through storytelling. I want to help you fight for what should be a basic right…. good mental health care. I want to do this because I know how much bad mental health care affected me. (i’m lucky to still be here). It’s going to start in Great Manchester – but hopefully could be a national thing…
SO, let’s do this thing, let’s make an army of young people who are struggling with their mental health. Let’s not be ashamed of who we are, let’s be fucking proud of what we can do together. Let’s imagine something brilliant and kind and that actually works.
Let’s do thing safely, sustainably, let’s do it right and take our time… but not like 20 years (lol).”
Balmy Army – Part 1 for Manchester International Festival
Balmy Army – Exhibition of the process, Action Lab and Space for Mutual Care.
Balmy Army – A Movement.
Credits
To date Balmy Army has been made by 80 young people from Greater Manchester, with the vacuum cleaner, Kevin Edward Turner, Lizzie Chapman, Toni-Dee, Caz Hughes, Evyn Seaton-Mooney, Rory Aaron, Rosalyne Norford, Gráinne Flynn, Cara Looij, Sascha Gilmour, Charlie Clark, HOME, Factory International, Contact, 42nd Street, Gorse Hill Studios and the Hope and Horizon Wards at Fairfield Hospital.
Special shout out to Lucy and Lisa from HOME – the best.