The Mad Pride Cabaret

Gallery Gachet, West Coast Mental Health Network & Stand Up for Mental Health present
THE MAD PRIDE CABARET
hosted by Karen Ward & Steve Lytton
SAT JULY 13th, 2013, 7 – 10.30pm
Celebrating International Mad Pride Day on July 14th!
Mad Pride Schedule:
7 – 9pm – Mad Pride Cabaret & Art Fun-raiser on the Art Cart
9 – 10.30pm – Mad Dance Party with DJ

Bring on the crazy and all the madness we can muster. Wear your maddest party hat and join us in celebration: We are mad. We are crazy. And we are proud to be. We believe madness is a completely sane and well-adjusted response to living in such a mad world.
The Mad Pride Cabaret will take place on Sat July 13th at Gallery Gachet on the eve of international Mad Pride Day.

This multifaceted, fun time, extravaganza event features performers who are not afraid of being called crazy; comics, poets, visionaries, singers, strummers and hummers with something to get off their chests and who celebrate our human bio-diversity and unparalleled tenacity in the face of persistent barriers; as well as an art fundraiser offering affordable original pieces of art to raise funds for future Gachet programs.
Mad Pride is an international movement created by psychiatric survivors, consumers, folks labeled “mentally ill”, all of us that proudly reclaim the words mad & crazy, and all in solidarity with us.This year our Mad Pride Cabaret’s theme embraces and jostles with ideas surrounding mental illness and all its definitions and labelling within the context of living in a mad world. The main gallery exhibition taking place at Gachet during this time BorderLines presents the art works of 10 national and international artists interrogating ideas pertaining to diagnoses. In our Salon Shop, we showcase the local Gachet and Downtown Eastside community in, It’s a Mad World. For more information on these exhibitions, you can visit, gachet.org/exhibitions

Our basis of unity:

• We agree to support the artistic and professional development of our community as a means to achieve social, cultural and economic justice
• We agree to support the wellness of people marginalized by their mental health, trauma and/or abuse experience
• We work for the elimination of discrimination against people marginalized by their mental  health, trauma and/or abuse experience
• We believe in the expression and practice of art and culture as a human right
• We agree to promote the critical function of art and culture in building a healthy society
• We believe art is a means for survival, self-expression and health

West Coast Mental Health Network is a charitable, non-profit society run wholly by and for people who have experienced treatment in the mental health system.

Stand Up for Mental Health was founded by David Granirer, a counsellor and stand-up comic, and author of the The Happy Neurotic: How Fear and Angst Can Lead To Happiness and Success. Stand Up For Mental Health teaches stand up comedy
to people with mental illness.

*** This event is sponsored by the West Coast Mental Health Network (WCMHN).

Media contacts:
Lee Williams, Communications and Fundraising Coordinator,
Gallery Gachet, 604 687 2468, communications@gachet.org