A workshop series queering the Recoverist Manifesto
Portraits of Recovery invites LGBT+ people in recovery from substance use to join The Things We Dreamed Of… a free series of artist-led workshops exploring queer healing, creativity and collective imagination.
Led by artists Jez Dolan and Alana Lake, the project draws on the Recoverist Manifesto, which reframes recovery as a cultural, social and political act. The Manifesto insists that recovery is not a private struggle, but a shared creative force: a way of reclaiming agency, connection and voice
This workshop series and public performance will transform the Whitworth into a queer rehearsal room: a place where longing, possibility and future-making sit alongside uncertainty, vulnerability and the risk of getting it wrong.
The artists say:
“The rehearsal space operates as a queer reorientation of the Recoverist Manifesto, a provocation and a call to action.”
What Queer Recovery Means Here
Queer recovery is expansive, creative, and defiantly non-linear. It resists the pressure to “perform” success and instead embraces experimentation, play, and the courage to be unfinished.
Drawing on Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure (2011), the workshops explore failure not as an endpoint, but as a productive part of creative and Recoverist practice. As Halberstam writes, “rather than striving for conventional forms of success, artists might embrace experimentation, uncertainty and even failure as methods of discovery.”
Here, the Recoverist journey becomes a rehearsal room – somewhere to try things out, warm up, tune in, stretch and imagine new ways of being. It’s about learning to trust the process, sit with the not knowing and notice what begins to take shape.
Workshop Dates
All workshops are free and take place on Saturdays, 1-3pm at the Whitworth.
- 25 July
- 8 August
- 22 August
- 5 September
- + One additional date TBC
Places are limited so register to secure your spot. No previous arts or performance experience is needed, just openness and a willingness to explore alongside others.
Final Public Performance as part of this September’s Recoverist Month
A celebration of queer becoming, collective contributions will culminate in a co-produced performance shared with audiences:
Thursday 10 September 6-8pm at the Whitworth
If you’re an LGBT+ person in recovery and ready to explore making, connection and new ways of becoming, we’d love to hear from you.
