Catalogue Number
NMLH.2021.22
Object Name
Banner
Title
'AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. ACT UP! Manchester'
Place
Strangeways Prison, Manchester, UK
People
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) Manchester
Events
AIDS crisis
Description
Half black text on pink background, half pink text on black background that reads 'Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, ACT UP! Manchester'. 2 light-pink human figures, in the style of Keith Haring's art, are on each side of the text.
ACT UP Manchester was formed by local LGBTQIA+ activists in 1988. Like the other chapters of ACT UP around the world, ACT UP Manchester used direct action to challenge government inaction in funding HIV care and prevention, and to raise awareness of HIV, myth busting harmful rumours that led to social ostracisation of people with HIV and AIDS. They also promoted safer sex as a form of risk reduction at a time when gay inclusive sex education education was banned due to Section 28 legislation. ACT UP Manchester radically promoted safer sex at Strangeways prison by stuffing tennis balls with condoms to protest the government's refusal to provide safer sex supplies to incarcerated people, despite rising rates of HIV in prisons at the time.
The original chapter of ACT UP was formed in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Centre in New York by radical gay activist Larry Kramer in response to his perception that other gay organisations were being too cautious in the face of the rapid spread of HIV. At the time ACT UP was formed, HIV and AIDS was fatal as there was no known successful treatment, and while anyone could become infected, the majority of known cases of HIV and AIDS in the 1980s were in men who had sex with men. Campaign groups like ACT UP pressured governments to fund treatment research which resulted in the creation of medications that mean that today the majority of HIV positive people receiving treatment can live to a natural life expectancy.
**ON DISPLAY**
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