RECOVERIST MONTH IS BACK FOR SEPTEMBER 2025
Annual arts programme challenges perceptions of addiction and recovery
Recoverist Month, the UK’s only arts-based awareness event that places people in recovery from substance use centre stage, is back for September 2025.
Returning for its third instalment, this year will see exhibitions, a film premiere and more at venues around Manchester, including HOME, Castlefield Gallery and The Whitworth.
Recoverist Month works with contemporary artists and galleries to empower people and communities in recovery to rewrite the narratives through the lens of art. Now in its third year, it was launched by Portraits of Recovery in 2023.
Amongst the highlights of this year’s programme is the premiere of award-winning filmmaker and Royal College of Art graduate Oscar Wyndham Lewis’s crowd-funded short film Small Hours: A Portrait of Alcoholism. Narrated by Robert Bathurst (Downton Abbey, Cold Feet, Toast of London), the 13-minute oil on glass animation about an artist in the end stages of alcoholism, captures those critical moments in life that lead us down wildly different paths.
Curated and facilitated by artist Divine Southgate-Smith, African Objects: Psychoactives, Spirituality and Mental Health brings together Black and African- Caribbean people with lived experience of mental health or substance use and recovery. Responding to objects selected from Manchester Museum‘s Living Cultures collection, this project explored cultural heritage and identity, roots to spirituality and recovery through poetry, music and storytelling.
And three exhibitions, initiated and conceived by Portraits of Recovery, run throughout the month. Recoverist Curators at The Whitworth (this until July 2026) is curated by five people in recovery. It tells of the hopes, fears, desires and dreams of recovering people through reinterpreting the works of Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Wolfgang Tillmans.
Whilst ANEW Way to Peel an Orange at Castlefield Gallery (until 19 October 2025) exhibits artworks created between designer Joe Hartley and the ANEW recovery community, based in Tameside, where Hartley spent five months as artist in residence. The works include black and white photography, sculptural ceramics, bespoke furniture and a video of recently hatched brood of ‘Recoverist chickens’.
And at HOME, Artefacts of Interaction, a collaboration between Portraits of Recovery, Venture Arts and HOME explores the intersection between neurodivergence, art practice and substance use.The four large scale co-created paintings are described as ’living conversations’ by lead artist Will Belshah. (Granada Foundation Galleries 1 & 2, 6 September 2025 – 11 January 2026)
Last but not least, the Chaordic Symposium (25 September 2025, The Whitworth) will share insights into the transformative power of the arts, showcasing the learning from Portraits od Recovery’s three year commissioning strand which includes Let’s Talk About Chemsex, Recoverist Curators and ANEW Way to Peel an Orange. Speakers include Dame Carol Black, who was commissioned by the UK Government to produce an independent review of drug treatment (2020/21), Peter Heslip, Director, Visual Arts and Brighton, Arts Council England, David Culter, CEO Baring Foundation and Dr Clive Parkinson (former Director Arts for Health at MMU).
About Recoverist Month
Recoverist Month is the brainchild of Mark Prest, founding director of Portraits of Recovery and himself a man in recovery.
Portraits of Recovery is building Recoverist Month as a nationally significant, yearly flagship arts and cultural event for recovery communities, as a parallel to Black History Month and Pride.
‘Recoverist’ is a portmanteau word blending recovery and activism, and it includes those in recovery, their family, friends, and significant others.
