September 2023 saw the launch of Greater Manchester’s first annual Recoverist Month.
Changing the conversation by honouring and celebrating people’s lives spent in addiction and recovery.
A month-long series of new commissions, performances, and creative events including the premiere of Sue Devaney‘s (Coronation Street’s Debbie Webster) Didn’t You Used to Be Somebody?
SIX artists, FIVE new commissions across FIVE venues and ONE festival
To mark International Recovery Month, Portraits of Recovery (PORe) launched a new annual awareness event in September 2023 in Manchester.
Recoverist Month puts Greater Manchester’s thriving recovery communities centre stage by increasing visibility and directly supporting the voice of lived experience. Celebrating recovery from substance use through the arts and culture, the event promotes positive health messages and adds to the conversation that recovery is a viable lifestyle choice.
With inclusivity at its core, all Recoverist Month events are either free or Pay As You Feel.
‘Recoverist’ is a new portmanteau word blending recovery and activism and it includes those in recovery, their family, friends and significant others.
An innovative and timely new feature for Greater Manchester’s cultural calendar, Recoverist Month aims to establish itself as a yearly flagship event for recovery communities, as a parallel to Black History Month or Pride.
In the US, International Recovery Month has been celebrated every September since the 1980s, but this awareness initiative has not yet gained momentum in the UK on the same scale. Recoverist Month will change this.
Mark Prest, director, Portraits of Recovery, said: “Portraits of Recovery’s work is about increasing access and opportunity to the transformational power of the arts and culture.
“We only need to look at how the Queer, disabled, POC and women’s art movements have taken back control through their cultural production. We advocate, this approach for the recovery community.
“Recovery is a collective process, and why partnership working is critical to delivering our ambitions.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our partners including our commissioned artists as Recoverist Month would not be possible without them. Establishing an annual Recoverist Month has been a long-term ambition, now realised through our national portfolio funding from Arts Council England and support from the Greater Manchester Culture Fund, for which I wholeheartedly thank them and feel truly grateful.”
Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said: “It is great to see the launch of Recoverist Month in Greater Manchester and I am a strong believer that by using the arts we can successfully send a strong message to our communities that recovery is a achievable goal, as well as combat the stigma attached to addiction to drugs and alcohol.
“In Greater Manchester, we help to support and coordinate local authority commissioners to ensure high-quality drug and alcohol treatment provision. Support is available to all our residents at all stages of their recovery journey. Projects such as Recoverist Month can play a massive part in helping people to maintain their recovery, as well as support others who are still on a journey towards recovery.”
Jen Cleary, Director of Combined Arts & North, Arts Council England, said: “Recoverist Month is a great opportunity to highlight the possibilities of recovery and the many ways in which arts and culture can change lives.
“It’s a welcome addition to the Greater Manchester cultural calendar and one which we’re proud to be supporting as part of our new National Portfolio. The work speaks strongly to our Let’s Create strategy and our aims that all communities can participate in culture and that the creativity of each of us is valued, celebrated, and given opportunities to flourish.”
THE PROGRAMME
A Moveable Feast by Jez Dolan
A Moveable Feast sees artist Jez Dolan working with Sober Gay Socials members to explore alternative, queer sober social provision for LGBTQ+ people in recovery from substance use.
Whilst queer culture can be unashamedly hedonistic, this new commission for Recoverist Month blows the roof off convention and dreams big the possibilities for much-needed sober spaces within Manchester’s LGBTQ+ community. At the Whitworth Gallery.
Recovery in Sound by Quieting, a music producer, visual artist, and DJ with a background in the UK’s punk, hardcore and DIY indie scenes, has been working with a group of people in recovery from addiction and some with experience of homelessness. Created with Brighter Sound.
To the Sun, Moon & Stars by Lois Blackburn
A series of workshops by artist Lois Blackburn resulting in an exhibition of participant-created work at Gallery Oldham.
Do You Want to Be Somebody? by Sue Devaney
Didn’t You Used To Be Somebody? sees Sue Devaney (Coronation Street, Dinnerladies, Mamma Mia) as Jessie Jackson, a woman of a certain age with an insatiable appetite for all things bright and beautiful and off-the-scale bad. Shown at HOME Mcr.
STEPHEN by Melanie Manchot
Visual artist Melanie Manchot works with a recovery group in Liverpool, who take up roles in a semi-fictional film-within-a-film that explores addiction and mental health from multiple perspectives. It is centred around STEPHEN, a character recovering from gambling and alcohol addictions. At HOME Mcr.
Towards a Recoverist Future
Taking place in the Whitworth Gallery’s Grand Hall, over 100 attendees from the arts, health, social and justice industries, gathered to hear the evidence, promises and possibilities generated by 2023’s inaugural Recoverist Month.
A Recoverist Month event that, through the arts changes the conversation on substance use and recovery.
Recoverist = Recovery + Activist
Recoverist Month September 2023 is an initiative led by Portraits of Recovery: a pioneering Manchester-based, visual arts charity.
