Mark Prest founded visual arts charity Portraits of Recovery as part of his own recovery. He provides an update as its second annual Recoverist Month draws to a close.
From Instagram reels exploring sober curiosity to a gallery takeover themed around chemsex and a museum panel discussion on barriers to recovery among South Asian women, it’s been a hectic few weeks.
Greater Manchester-based Recoverist Month (DDN, October 2023, page 10) is the UK’s only arts-based awareness event that places people in recovery from substance use centre stage. And ever since I started my own recovery journey in 2008, it’s been a burning ambition to make it a reality.
Recoverist Manifesto
In part, it was inspired by the radical outlook and language of the ‘Recoverist Manifesto’, a powerful collective statement that unites the voices of individuals in recovery. The manifesto was born out of a project led by Portraits of Recovery and curated by Dr Clive Parkinson, former director of arts for health at the Manchester School of Art. It is now also available on our website in Italian, Dutch, Lithuanian and Gaelic.
At its core, the Recoverist Manifesto champions the direct voices of those in recovery, advocating for the transformative redefinition of recovery identities. It doesn’t view people as mere passive participants in recovery but instead empowers them as ‘recoverists’. In case you haven’t already worked it out, ‘recoverist’ is a portmanteau word, blending recovery and activism.
The spirit of the manifesto runs right through Recoverist Month, which coincides with International Recovery Month each September. Now in our second year, our aim is to embed the event within the region’s annual cultural calendar, a bedfellow to the more established Pride and Black History Month.
Queer Takeover
One of this year’s finale events was a queer takeover of Manchester Art Gallery curated by the project’s lead artist Harold Offeh and five other queer international artists. Called Let’s Talk About Chemsex Presents…, it explored themes around sex on chems, intimacy, desire, respect and consent within the LGBT+ community – outside of London, Manchester has the largest chemsex scene in Europe.
Chemsex could be seen as a response to internalised forms of homophobia, and art lends itself to exploring issues around sex on chems by opening up liminal space for the building of mutually trustful, sharing relationships. At the event Offeh debuted a double A-side EP called Anticipation <—> Anxiety and A Warm Hug, which he co-created with a group of people with lived experience of chemsex.
Beyond the Surface at The Turnpike Gallery is an exhibition profiling ten years of Fallen Angels Dance Theatre’s work in the Greater Manchester borough of Wigan. Running until 23 November, its focal point is a newly commissioned work called Samadhi. An immersive digital dance, light and sound installation, the work aims to bring audiences to the heart of healing journeys experienced by people in recovery. Chester-based Fallen Angels exists to support people in recovery from addiction and those living with a mental health condition to transform their lives through dance, performance and creativity.
Sober Curiosity
A digital element to this year’s Recoverist Month was Sober Curiosity, a series of street-based interviews, disseminated as Instagram reels, by established content creator Scott James (@projectcerti). A photographer and filmmaker, he has amassed a large social following for his laid-back interviews with passersby, which engage with mental health and promote self-acceptance and wellbeing.
For Recoverist Month, @projectcerti turned its attention to the theme of Sober Curiosity and Portraits of Recovery commissioned the creator to film individual conversations with people from five locations across Greater Manchester. Subjects were asked if they had heard of sober curiosity and how it impacted on their lives. The clips garnered thousands of views and generated positive online conversations around actively choosing not to drink or to lessen alcohol consumption.
Ed Edwards’ award-winning play The Political History of Smack and Crack, which chronicles the Thatcher-era heroin epidemic, was safe in the hands of Eve Steele and William Fox. The actors, who have been performing together as lovers and heroin users Mandy and Neil since 2020, gave a rehearsed reading at Oldham Library’s performance space.
Will Belshah is a neurodivergent queer artist, working predominantly in painting. Spaces Between kicked off a 12-month project, in collaboration with Portraits of Recovery, Venture Arts and HOME arts centre, on the intersectionality between neurodiversity, substance use and artistic practice, with the audience invited to take part in a shared creative response. Specialist speakers included Amanda Sutton, director of Venture Arts, Lisa Williams, lecturer in criminology, University of Manchester, Michele Hacking, NHS clinical psychologist and Dominic Pillai, curator of social engagement at Portraits of Recovery.
Also at HOME, we screened Fallen Angels’ Transfiguration, a trio of short dance films. I Fall, I Need and We Rise focus on a series of defining moments in the journey from active addiction to recovery. Paul Bayes Kitcher, co-founder/artistic director of Fallen Angels took part in a post-screening Q&A alongside director Dan Thorburn and playwright/actor Eve Steele, compered by Leon Clowes.
Manchester Museum
IZZAT: South Asian Women and Substance Use was a panel discussion exploring the unique barriers South Asian women face in accessing support for substance use. Speaking at Manchester Museum were Dr Sarah Fox from the substance use and associated behaviours research group (SUAB) at Manchester Metropolitan University, recovery advocate Aunee Bhogaita AKA Brown Girl in a Bottle, who has lived experience of sexual violence and substance use and Kim Kaur and Poonum Chauhan of SAFIR* (South Asian Females in Recovery). The discussion served as a launch pad for a creative project with South Asian women in recovery, which will take place throughout 2025.
A second collaborative event with Manchester Museum saw Dr Njabulo Chipangura, curator of living cultures at Manchester Museum, offered the rare opportunity to engage with and handle cultural heritage objects used for spiritual or ancestor worship purposes. African Objects: Psychoactives and Spirituality saw several exhibits ordinarily confined to the museum basement brought above stairs to begin conversations on the use of psychoactives for enhanced notions of spirituality and for the treatment of substance use issues.
Portraits
Finally, a reflective event, Recoverist Curators: Cabinet of Curiosities showcased a back catalogue of Portraits of Recovery work since 2011. Displayed at Whitworth Art Gallery, content was selected by the recoverist curators, a group of people in recovery from substance use. Delving into the Whitworth’s own collections, the group will, over the next few months, select and re-interpret artworks through a recoverist lens, helping to challenge societal stigma by rewriting the narrative. A resulting exhibition will open in spring 2025.
Portraits of Recovery’s work, including Recoverist Month, 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 and neurodivergent, global majority and women’s movements have taken back control through their cultural production. We strongly advocate this approach for the recovery community.
Mark Prest is the founder and director of Portraits of Recovery.