Recoverist Curators
Image from Jez Dolan: A Moveable Feast, 2023. Photography: Lee Baxter.

Recoverist Curators

Recoverist = recovery + activist.

Recoverist Curators is part of Chaordic, a three-year commissioning strand of work in partnership with the Whitworth, Manchester Art Gallery, and the Castlefield Gallery. See here for more details.

Led by Portraits of Recovery, Recoverist Curators is a project that will work with people in recovery from substance use. The Recoverist Curators will explore and reinterpret the Whitworth’s art collection and influence their future programming. This project aims to better understand the hopes, fears, desires and dreams of Greater Manchester’s recovery community.  

Recoverist Curators is a participatory form of practice that builds on and develops a Recoverist glossary of language that better represents our recovery communities, within the Whitworth and the Whitworth’s collection. This constituent-led project will build on the learning the Whitworth has developed from other constituent-based exhibitions, such as Still Parents and (Un)Defining Queer to deliver a programme that has an equitable understanding of power-sharing, curation, engagement and learning. 

Over 6 months, we will invite practitioners who identify as being in recovery, to deliver sessions with our Recoverists that revolve around the gallery’s art collection. These sessions will facilitate conversations within a safe space for developing the Recoverist glossary, which will form the basis for a major public exhibition. 

Our Recoverist glossary will re-interpret art from the Whitworth’s collection through a Recoverist lens, positioning art as a tool that humanises the recovery experience, and better informs society about this community’s lived experience.  

Recoverist Curators call out

We are looking for a group of people in recovery from substance use, who have an interest in the arts and culture.  

How to apply:  

Please email an expression of interest to info@portraitsofrecovery.org.uk outlining why you would like to be a part of this project in no more than 200 words. Find out more here.

Closing date: 31st July 2024. 

Funded with support from:

Learn More

Untitled, Li Yuan Chia.

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The Whitworth's Collection

Our Recoverist Curators will undergo specialist training throughout the project to learn more about the recovery community, curatorial practise and the Whitworth’s art collection.

Portraits of Recovery champion’s Recoverist voices through the transformational power of art.