The Period Vampires

Blood Moon Rising is a brand new event for 2026 based on all thing menstrual! Curated by The Period Vampires, Red pages book club and Irise International. We aim to provide education, care and some bloody good fun.

What's on?

A range of educational, creative and wellbeing workshops

Talks from individuals and organisations working in menstrual justice and empowerment

Information stalls from charities, organisations, healthcare and wellbeing professionals

An art gallery featuring artists and collectives menstrual art, textiles and photography

Music from incredible feminist punk bands and DJs

Performance from The Period Vampires and friends

The Womb Tomb- enter the vampires lair- free period products and pain relief, games, and rituals

The Red Pages cosy library

Plus so much more!

We aim to break stigmas, educate and highlight the incredible work in the menstrual justice field in a fun space for all to enjoy.

Who will be there?

The Organisers

Irise International

Irise International is a Sheffield-based charity and global leader in menstrual justice programming, policy and research. They equip and resource the youth movement in the UK to drive menstrual justice for all.

The Period Vampires are a group of theatrical menstrual activists working at festivals and events across the UK to give out free period products and ends stigmas. Using humour, games and rituals, they break down barriers and create a safe space for people to talk and learn about menstruation.

The Red Pages

The Red Pages is a grass-roots community and bookclub dedicated to education and body-literacy around menstruation and hormones. Their director, Daisy, is a menstrual activist providing workshops around menstruation and cyclical living.

Empower Period Committee

The Empower Period Committee youth-board is made up of menstrual justice activists from across the UK. They work closely with Irise’s team and board of Trustees to co-produce their strategy and programmes, as well as leading on their own campaigns.

Charities and companies

Pads on a Roll

Pads on a Roll is an award-winning innovation designed to make period products as accessible as toilet paper. The in-cubicle dispenser holds a continuous roll of pads, offering privacy, dignity, and convenience where people need them.

Days for Girls

Days for Girls works to eliminate the stigma and limitations associated with menstruation so that women and girls have improved health, education and livelihoods. To date, they have reached over 3.5 million women and girls with their life-changing menstrual health solutions.

Hey Girls

Hey girls is the multi-award-winning period product social enterprise of the year! Their mission is to eradicate period poverty in the UK, improve access to quality products & increase education around period health to eliminate shame and stigma. With their buy one, donate one business model they have donated 42 million period products and counting

Workshops and info stalls

SHED

Shed is a non-profit organisation born out the North west of England with the goal to make sexual and reproductive health accessible and less taboo. We try to achieve this through supplying donations to a range of people and services, facilitating safety workshops for both young people and adults and hosting events to help raise funds for ourselves and other causes.

ClitorArti

The ClitorArti, an all inclusive art workshop, putting clitoral anatomy on the agenda. Bringing education, mischief and empowerment. Their aim is to spread awareness in a space that feels safe for all to learn, share and create.

Lianne May- Tree Doula

Lianne is a birth doula who practices the art of massage, particularly focused around people’s reproductive health. She will lead a workshop where people are invited to learn how to massage their own womb to help ease menstrual irregularities and pain, and to help their cycle slowly realign. Additionally the massage will help many other issues, such as emotional blockages, trauma, and reconnection to the lunar plexus.

Invisible-Visible Project

Denise Laura Baker is a photojournalist, documentary photographer, and multi-media artist. Her work, primarily ethnographic, had a strong emphasis on authentic storytelling and personal narrative, and this desire to hear and reflect the voices and stories of diverse groups of people is also reflected in her creative work. Denise blends the visual arts with psychology, fostering deep empathy and understanding of the human experience. Denise is also an educator, delivering workshops and providing mentoring.

Heather- Cyclical Living

Heather Sanderson is the founder of Liberating Cycles CIC.

She creates menstrual cycle education for local authorities and schools, her passion is talking to people of all ages about cyclical experiences. The ascent and descent in your monthly cycle, life cycle, and creative process is her jam! As a therapist, she believes that acknowledging how we cycle is an essential part of self-inquiry and personal development.

Orla- Somatic Movement

Orla is a creative expressive arts and somatic movement artist and therapeutic practitioner. Their work is queer feminist and centres on the shared stories of the earth and minority genders. They question how expressive arts and somatic movement can contribute to a larger socio-political discussion and embrace controversial taboo subjects, shared experiences and collective healing. They will be offering a workshop that gently explores how best to support embodiment and resource the soma (body) throughout the different stages of the menstrual cycle.

Lottie- Mental health nurse

Lottie is an artist and mental health nurse based in Bristol. She create ethereal, whimsical and figurative paintings with oils. Her artistic focus is to tell stories of female empowerment. She is starting a new artistic project exploring the relationship between feminism and healthcare, with a focus on the policing of women’s voices and bodies that emerged during the witch trials. She recently wrote her mental health nursing dissertation on women’s experiences of stigma surrounding premenstrual disorders such as PMS and PMDD. She hopes to continue to raise awareness of the mental health challenges that emerge.

Learn Botanics

Claire is a Medical Herbalist and Aromatherapist with over 15 years of clinical experience supporting clients in her private clinic in Bristol and internationally with Napiers Online Clinic. Specialising in hormonal health, Claire is passionate about the power of menstrual cycle awareness - a core foundation of both her clinical practice and teaching. Through her business, Learn Botanics Herbal Medicine Clinic & Workshops, she offers 1:1 consultations, courses and workshops, helping people reconnect with their health through the ancient wisdom of herbal medicine. She teaches online, in Bristol, across the UK, and in Europe.

Delyth Pannett- D4G

Delyth Pannett is the UK Country Coordinator for Days for Girls UK. With over 15 years’ experience as an education professional and consultant in both national and international settings, Delyth is deeply committed to empowering individuals and communities through education and sustainable solutions. Her work involves coordinating the UK’s volunteer teams, managing the distribution of reusable menstrual health kits globally, and developing the UK’s advocacy and menstrual health education strategies. Delyth has lived and worked abroad—in countries including Azerbaijan and Angola—and originally joined Days for Girls as a Voluntary Team Leader, later founding the Barry, UK, team. Academically, she holds a BSc (Hons) in Genetics, a PGCE in Biology, and is a Member of the Royal Society of Biology.

Artists and collectives

Ricebox Studio

Founded by four Asian women, Ricebox Studio is an UK award-winning design practice that uses visual communication and creative technology for positive change. Our mission is to create alternative forms of education, raise awareness of social issues, and encourage creative, impactful conversations.

Jenny K

Jenny K is a qualified mental health nurse with 15 years experience caring for acutely unwell people. Her specialty is perinatal care, having just completed a Masters in arts, health and wellbeing at Plymouth Marjon University she wrote her dissertation on birth trauma. She also has a BA in fine art and uses her creative practice to create capes and tries to weave her creativity into the recovery work she does with adults she see's in the community. She tries to embed creativity into her work and life, She also dj's regularly as she finds music to be hugely beneficial to herself and others.

Vicious Cycles Gallery

This photography gallery focuses on peoples experiences with problematic menstrual cycles with disability. As part of Hat Porters research at the University of Exeter they explore how people use photographs to visualise the issues.

Alannah Morris art

Alannah is the creative director of the period vampires. As creative director she oversees set up of decor and floor plan as well as organising/communication with artists and workshop holders before and during the event. She will also be contributing towards the decor, and artwork in the gallery along with helping artist access the space and individuals access the workshops held.

The Sea Cat

The Sea Cat is a multi disciplinary artist, model and performer living in Cornwall, UK. She explores themes of nature, folklore, fears and politics within her art where she creates unique art, clothing, costume and performance pieces.

As well as working in art and textiles, she runs The Period Vampires and works on the Empower Period Committee with Irise International. Her work in the menstrual justice field has inspired her to co-curate Blood Moon Rising- A Menstruation Celebration.

Annika Silver

Annika will be offering a collection of handmade Vulva necklaces. Each one is lovingly crafted as a symbol of empowerment, body autonomy, and unapologetic self expression. These pieces celebrate the beauty of the human form Every necklace sold will help raise funds in support of The Period Vampires cause turning art into advocacy and creativity into community care.

Blue Shack Studio

Josette is an artist based in St Ives, Cornwall. Creating original abstract artworks on canvas and miniature art pieces presented as unique gift cards. She also runs 'The Scaleybacks'- a St Ives Guise Guild, a community group dedicated to preserving Cornish traditions, offers free creative workshops for locals and manages a festival costume gallery and studio called The Bazaar in Emporium. Josette is a proud member of The Period Vampires, where she perform as her alter ego- the menopausal vampire Scarlett Bloodfade.

Yma Art

Amy does a range of unique styles of artwork with different media. She produces artwork for The Period Vampires such as logos, drawings for merch and ideas for artwork to be displayed. Her work in general includes designing logos and other digital art, paintings, and a range of art styles from black work to colour filled pieces.

Sticky Vix

Sticky Vix is a queer, non-binary, and neurodivergent artist with a love for all things slimy, sexy, and sci-fi. Blending tattooing, fine art, and live performance, they create colourful, cartoon-inspired, and nature-infused works and costume. Passionate about collaboration, accessibility, and LGBTQ+ visibility, Vix’s art celebrates bodies, connection, and creative play. Their long-running immersive project, Slimetime: Slugtopia—inspired by the surreal mating rituals of the leopard slug—has transformed spaces at festivals like Shambala, Boomtown, and Balter Festival into queer-safe, sensory worlds that revel in fluidity, neurodiversity, and the glorious goo of existence.

Lottie's Kingdom

Lottie is an artist and mental health nurse based in Bristol. She is interested in creating ethereal experiences with oil paint. She loves layering thick paint in mesmerising colours. Oil paints challenge her natural perfectionism, forcing her to explore looser styles. The most important aspect of her artwork is the process, she finds the cathartic act of creating with physical mediums most rewarding. Her artistic focus is generally centred around female empowerment. She is always inserting mythological and historical symbolism into her work. She takes inspiration from particular art styles and movements including naïve and folk art, Impressionism, psychedelia and conceptual art.

Sad Baby Design

Sad baby design is the intersection between art and fashion. A movement, upcycled, handmade clothing repurposed and hand painted to tell a story, to express yourself and to align with your politics and lifestyle. Embracing unapologetic queerness and breaking conventions around gendered clothing - Sad Baby Design is made for everyone. Sad Baby Design takes inspiration from queer and underground culture and subverting mainstream politics - taking imagery, quotes and context from protests, free party culture, DIY punk culture and queerness being an inherently political and anti-state, alternative experience they are a queer, working class and disabled artist and this comes through in reference. This is shown throughout the placards, clothing and wall hangings they produce as resident artist of Soz Lad and with their band HissyFist.

Goose Boots

Drew Boots is a multidisciplinary artist from the North of England. Known for his striking portraiture, he preserves memories and captures characters in vivid detail. His love of street art heavily influences his artwork and fashion design, and his unique paintings reflect emotion and UK counterculture.

Music and Performance

Hissy Fist

HISSY FIST are a queer, femme and non-binary collective that are here to tear down walls - both sonic and societal. With a genre-straddling fusion of distorted punk rawness, electrifying beats and ethereal bog witch harmonies, their tough and tender offerings are the soundtrack to resistance and community building. Their heart-felt performances call out the fight for our inter-connected struggles. HISSY FIST brings joy and silliness alongside seething queer rage. You will laugh, cry, stomp your feet and feel the fire burn within. Prepare to be lured into the depths of your own rage. Anti-state, anti-fascist, anti-conformist.

The Panger

The Panger (formerly known as Cervical Snare)-
The Panger is known for heavy, uncompromising sets built on dark amens, and lethal kicks. A resident of both the Jungle Syndicate and Amenstrual Crew, The Panger has smashed dancefloors across various festivals and clubs across the Uk and Europe.

Expect a blood bath of dark breaks, rough edges, and no mercy.

The Clamor Clowns

Clamor Clowns the mad freaks of the circus!! Bursting with chaotic routines, every performance is a riotous and chaotic celebration of delight and disorder, unhinged untamed and unapologetic! With dancers and circus performers, crafting moments of pure, joyful chaos. But this time there’s a twist. As the night deepens the vampires emerge from the shadows, lured by the pulse of the clowns chaos. One by one, under the glow of the moon the Clamor Clowns are turned into vampires themselves, their playful energy twisting into something Darkley dazzling.

Boarderline Massive

Borderline Massive aka Moz Stanton is a multimedia artist and DJ whose practice often deals with themes of identity and community. Unbound by mediums, they invite their audiences to experience diverse artistic manifestations using an ever-expansive combination of intricately programmed visuals that dance to sound, interactive installations, curated immersive experiences, performance, textiles and sculpture.

Lady Panthera

Burlesque performance to make you purr with one hell of a bite!

Ms Dismay

Ms Dismay is a performer from the south west of England. Focused on creating dark and twisted performance with important messages. She uses the art of gorlesque to express her chronic illness and menstrual issues, luring you in with her graceful movements before plunging into the unknown. Ms Dismay is the mother of The Period Vampires and a creature of the night.

Magnus oh Puss

Magnus oh Puss is a cabaret performer and founder of The Period Vampires. After handing the torch over, they have focused on solo performance on the stage, creating performances you won't forget!

Event Details

Blood Moon Rising will be held in Bristol

More details coming soon

To find out more please email menstruationcelebration26@gmail.com

Tickets

Tickets available soon

Words from our supporters

"It was wonderful to be able to talk to the crew and thanks to them for listening. Felt very liberated"- Anonymous

"It made me cry to have it so normalised"- Anonymous

"I never expected to receive that level of support at a festival when on my period."- Anonymous

"I felt so happy and safe knowing you existed"- Anonymous

"Honestly, this is the best new festival initiative since drugs testing. I'm so thrilled you exist, and that you are making it all so much easier for bleeders at Balter. I've been going to festivals for 30 years now, and this is one of the changes that makes me happiest in that time"- Anonymous

"As a heavy bleeder and a PMDD- sufferer I know how this kind of thing can make or break your experience. Women's health needs are so often invisible, but our needs are important"- Anonymous

"Incredibly impressed & Thankful for The Period Vampires. I would of had to sit out the festival if it weren't for the products provided."- Anonymous

"Thank you so much for the experience, we'll never forget it!"- Anonymous

"The Period Vampires literally saved me!! I was at Off me Nut and suddenly came on my period I was worrying about not having anything on me in that moment and started to walk back to the tent in a panic and all of a sudden they appeared in front of me walking along the path with a basket of tampons it was actually magical. Genuinley couldn't believe that they just appeared in front of me. I've told so many people about this experience since and went to visit them multiple times after this happened. Genuinley amazing thing you do and it should be at all festivals"- Anonymous