From artists’ film screenings to an audio walking trail and a creative gathering at a Michelin-starred restaurant, Recoverist Month is back for its fourth installment.
The annual contemporary arts programme centres people in recovery from substance use each September.
Coinciding with International Recovery Month, every event is designed to challenge public perceptions of addiction and to empower individuals in recovery to reframe how they are represented and understood.
The annual event has been led and delivered by Portraits of Recovery (PORe) since 2023. PORe’s work underlines and showcases the rich contribution communities in recovery make to the UK’s art and cultural landscape.
This year’s events are based across Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Chester. PORe plans to widen the scope even further in future years, with ambitions for Recoverist Month to become an annual focal point for arts and culture organisations.
Recoverist is a portmanteau word, blending recovery and activist.
Here is a roundup of Recoverist Month 2026 highlights:
WALKING TRAIL WITH A POETIC SOUNDTRACK
Spanning 160 of woodland, wetland, moorland and meadow, Northern Roots in Oldham is the UK’s largest urban farm and eco-park.
For Recoverist Month, poet Phil Davenport has been working with members of the recovery community from Turning Point Oldham and Rochdale to co-create a permanent walking trail, sharing lived experience. It is called If You Could Speak to the World.
The soundtrack will guide visitors through the eco-park and is intended to highlight walking as a supportive practice for those in recovery.
WALK IN MY SHOES PERFORMANCE INSTALLATION
Artist Maisie Pritchard has been collaborating with people in recovery to co-create Walk in My Shoes.
Developed through walking, collecting and making together, the project explores recovery as a shared, non-linear journey, creating opportunities for connection, creativity and conversation.
The free two-day public event invites visitors to metaphorically 'walk in someone else's shoes', encouraging reflection on empathy, community and the role we can all play in supporting one another. At the heart of the event is Put Your Foot Down, a participatory artwork made from a pathway of floral foam bricks. Visitors are invited to walk across the surface, leaving footprints that gradually transform the sculpture into a collective record of movement, trace and shared experience. Salford Art Gallery & Museum 19-20 September 2026.
RECOVERIST MONTH FOR CINEPHILES
Counter Narratives, a screening of three artist films, will be followed by a panel discussion exploring the intersection between the moving image, mental health and recovery.
There Is No One What Will Take Care of You is a three-channel video installation by Dina Fiasconaro. Making its UK debut, it explores the relationship between a father, daughter and friend whose lives are impacted by substance use.
Small Hours is a hand-painted short animation from BAFTA-shortlisted Oscar Wyndham Lewis, which explores the grip of substance use and the fragile hope of human connection. It is narrated by actor Robert Bathurst (Downton Abbey, Cold Feet, Toast of London).
And finally, Milk is Miranda Stern’s BAFTA-nominated short documentary exploring maternal loss and heroin use.
The event will take place on at Stockport Plaza on 29 September.
Another Recoverist Month event, called Recoverist House of Horrors: Making Friends with Your Monsters, will see Alex Herod share her research on how the horror genre possesses a unique therapeutic potential to differently understand trauma and support recovery.
BREAKING BREAD AT WHERE THE LIGHT GETS IN
Set inside the loft-style surroundings of Where The Light Gets In, Stockport’s Michelin Green Star restaurant, Breaking Bread is a playful communal gathering led by Portraits of Recovery associate artist Joe Hartley. (27 September 2026)
Over food and shared art making, it brings together Recoverists, artists, curators, health practitioners, friends and collaborators to talk, connect and exchange through creative forms of play.
Across a three-course happening, guests will be invited into a series of collective moments using different materials and processes, each drawing on the ingredients, textures, and grains of a seeded loaf. The dining table becomes part studio, part meeting place and part stage for shared curiosity.
THE THINGS WE DREAMED OF: QUEERING THE RECOVERIST MANIFESTO
Things We Dreamed Of (10 September, The Whitworth) invites audiences to a performance unfolding in real time, where queer recovery becomes an act of imagination, resistance and collective future-making. It is co-produced and performed by people in recovery alongside lead artists Jez Dolan and Alana Lake.
Drawing on Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, the project treats failure as a radical strategy: a way of loosening the polished surfaces of “success” to reveal the raw, necessary work of trying, faltering and then again.
Mark Prest, founding director, Portraits of Recovery, said: "The arts are a powerful tool for positive social change and reframing identities around substance use.
"Recoverism is an ideology which can help support society to better look at itself, to shift radically how we all work, think, live, love, connect and creatively express ourselves.”
