This summer the Connection Salon Artists Collective presents Mad Pride Festival at the Gathering Place Community Centre from June 25 to July 25.
Celebrating art-making by people who identify as living with mental illness, psychiatric disabilities, or “madness,” Mad Pride Festival is a free event featuring a diverse line-up of visual artists, stand-up comics, theatre actors, musicians, poets, and more. The festival aims to reclaim the term “mad” while celebrating neurodiversity and challenging psychiatric stigma.
“Connection Salon’s mission has always been to empower underrepresented artists, particularly those with lived experiences of mental health issues,” says Pierre Leichner, one of the collective’s founders. “There are not enough cultural spaces in the city that prioritize these artists. We know that art fosters healing and community resilience, that it is incredibly important to our wellbeing. Mad art asserts identity, builds community, and resists the reduction of this work to mere pathology, therapy, or even outsider art. The Mad Pride Festival is an opportunity to showcase our pride while also creating a sense of belonging for both artists and audiences who have been marginalized.”
It all kicks off June 25 with a Mad Arts Coffee House, featuring an all-Indigenous line-up programmed by Kagan Goh: poet Joseph Dandurand (Kwantlen), comic Trevor Jang (Wet’suwet’en/Chinese-Canadian), writer Wanda John-Kehewin (Cree), actor Stephen Lytton (Nlaka’pamux), and storyteller Randy Tait (Nisgaa/Gitksan).
On July 2, David Diamond will provide a free theatre workshop, and David Granirer headlines an evening of stand-up comedy on July 7. Award-winning multidisciplinary artist Sandra Yuen will provide an artist talk on July 16.
July 26, Desiring Bodies, a double-bill film screening co-presented with Cinevolution Media Arts Society, will feature Sisters by Ying Wang and Am I the skinniest person you’ve ever seen? by Eisha Marjara. The films look beyond typical narratives about body image and societal beauty standards to shed light on eating disorders as reflections of a disordered society within the context of migration and displacement.
The visual art exhibition Gifts of Madness will run from July 3–Aug. 16, featuring the work of 12 local artists and an event with spoken word poet Nate Nate Nainers. The call for artists to participate in Gifts of Madness is open through June 19.
July 25, Mad Pride Festival will close with an afternoon parade down Seymour Street to Emery Barnes Park and on to Gathering Place Community Centre for a closing cabaret led by the Carnival Band, a community music project that includes a range of brass, woodwinds, percussions, and even accordions. Afterward, the cabaret finale will feature local acts Sinéad X Sanders, Magpie Ulysses, Daniela Elza, Jude Neale, and Reid Jamieson & CVM.
The festival takes inspiration from the Mad Pride movement of the 1990s, which began in Toronto as “Psychiatric Survivor Pride Day” — a response to the social stigma surrounding mental illness and a reflection on the oppressive treatment of psychiatric patients in the 20th century. The movement soon expanded to the UK and beyond.
Mad Pride Festival presented by Connection Salon Artists Collective runs from June 25 to July 25, 2026 at Gathering Place Community Centre, 609 Helmcken Street. All events are free admission, visit connectionsalon.ca for the full festival program.