Portraits of Recovery

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Portraits of Recovery

Portraits of Recovery is the only recovery based visual arts charity in the U.K.

Based in Manchester we work with leading contemporary artists, people and communities in recovery from substance use to create high quality, transformational art.

07/10/2026

The last audio guided tour of Recoverist Month is coming up this weekend. 🥲

We have loved leading you through Northern Roots beautiful 160-acre site, sharing poetry, and music from ‘If You Could Speak to the World...’

‘If You Could Speak to the World...’ is a project that invited people in recovery from substance use, to walk around Northern Roots and record poetry inspired by nature, and their lived experience.

Join us for our final guided walk on 10 October.

Book a free spot here: https://portraitsofrecovery.org.uk/whats-on/if-you-could-speak-to-the-world/

06/10/2026

Last Sunday, the table was set at Where the Light Gets In for Breaking Bread.

Over a three-course happening, Recoverists, artists, curators, health practitioners and friends came together to eat, make, listen and dream. The dining table became part studio, part meeting place, part stage, and listening became part of the artwork.

Joe Hartley's Afghan box camera, the "Marvelous Bellow-less Instant-ish Camera," captured hand-developed black-and-white portraits as the afternoon unfolded. Together, those images mapped the room's emerging connections: glances, exchanges and unexpected common ground.

As one of humanity's oldest gestures, breaking bread became a metaphor for what binds us together - generosity, exchange, and commonality. Thank you to everyone who pulled up a chair.

Breaking Bread is a Portraits of Recovery commission, with generous support from Where the Light Gets In, Stockport. Part of Recoverist Month 2026.

📸 by Jason Darley

02/10/2026

What a way to end the week! 🎊

Our joint exhibition with The Whitworth , Recoverist Curators: Re-Imagining the World We Live In, has been named a finalist in the Manchester Culture Awards 2026!

This exhibition was a collaboration with our partners at the Whitworth, and it was all about reimagining the world we live in. Six people in recovery reinterpreted works from the Whitworth collection through a Recoverist lens - and one visitor described seeing themselves "so wholly in one space" as "emotional and life affirming."

To be recognised alongside Manchester's vibrant cultural sector is a huge honour, and we're so grateful to everyone who made it possible, from our curators to the Whitworth to all of the visitors who saw and were moved by this exhibition.

Fingers crossed for November 14th! 🤞

01/10/2026

Still feeling inspired! 🥰

We had such a great time with Dr Zoe Zontou, David Hoyle & WiL Dickie this week at the launch of Zoe’s book, Performing Recovery: Addiction, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Representation.

Here are a few photos from the event. Did you join us? Let us know what you thought in the comments 👇

29/09/2026

Last week we led a group of people on our very first ‘If You Could Speak to the World...’ guided walk through Northern Roots beautiful 160-acre site.

"My heart is still singing from Saturday. I’ve been telling everyone about Portraits of Recovery and Northern Roots, especially your work and our walk together. What an experience!" - Angela

‘If You Could Speak to the World...’ is a project that invited people in recovery from substance use, to walk around Northern Roots and record poetry inspired by nature, and their lived experience.

Join us for our next guided walk on 1 October.

Book a free spot: https://portraitsofrecovery.org.uk/whats-on/if-you-could-speak-to-the-world/

28/09/2026

Tomorrow! Join us for Counter Narratives, at Stockport Plaza – three short films exploring substance use, recovery and mental health. Screened together for the first time.

A BAFTA-nominated documentary. A hand-painted animation eight years in the making, described by Stephen Fry as "simply magnificent." And a UK premiere of a father who chose compassion over punishment after losing his daughter.

Then a panel discussion with the filmmakers (Dina Fiasconaro, Miranda Stern and Oscar Wyndham Lewis) on what moving image can make possible when recovery is a lived process, not a resolved outcome.

📍 Stockport Plaza, Mersey Square, SK1 1SP
🗓️ Tomorrow, 29 September 2026, 6–8pm
🎟️ £2.50 via Eventbrite - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/counter-narratives-tickets-1994140649363?aff=oddtdtcreator

27/09/2026

Recovery gets shown on screen in a few reliable ways. Rock bottom, then redemption. Or tragedy, full stop.

The three films on Tuesday don't do that. They sit with the messier parts. The parts that don't resolve, the memories that don't tidy, the people who carry on.

Afterwards there's a panel. We'll be talking about how substance misuse and recovery get represented on screen, and what that does to the people watching.

Join us to find out more and have your say on the representation of recovery in film.

Tuesday 29 September, 6–8pm, Stockport Plaza. £2.50 on Eventbrite: https://portraitsofrecovery.org.uk/whats-on/counter-narratives/

26/09/2026

How do you film something like recovery?

That's roughly the question behind Counter Narratives. Three short films, animation, documentary and video art, from the UK and the USA, shown together for the first time. Then a conversation about what moving image can and can't do with substance use, recovery and mental health.

Chairing it is Dr Maurice Nagington, Senior Lecturer in Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Manchester. His research sits across palliative care, gay men's health, HIV and chemsex, and he's spent years working with film, drama and other cultural forms as ways of getting past the limits of interview data. His book The Moral Lessons of Chemsex came out in 2024.

Joining him is Dr Angela Samata, a psychotherapist and Arts and Mental Health Consultant, and co-founder of Grow-Wellbeing. She presented the BBC1 documentary Life After Su***de, made after her partner took his own life, which won the Mind Media Award for Best Factual TV. She's a Deputy Lieutenant of Merseyside, a consultant to the Royal Foundation, and has advised on scripts for the BBC, Channel 5 and Channel 4's Hollyoaks. She spent two decades in the arts before moving into psychotherapy, including leading the John Moores Painting Prize.

Also on the panel: film makers, Miranda Stern (Milk), Oscar Wyndham Lewis (Small Hours: A Portrait of Alcoholism) and Dina Fiasconaro (There Is No One What Will Take Care of You), whose film gets its UK premiere on the night.

Tuesday 29 September, 6–8pm, Stockport Plaza. £2.50 via the link 👇

https://portraitsofrecovery.org.uk/whats-on/counter-narratives/

25/09/2026

Too many conversations about addiction never happen because of stigma, fear and misunderstanding.

The Big Addiction Conversation is a new national campaign from The Forward Trust, aiming to start 17,000 conversations about addiction, one for every life lost each year in the UK.

At the heart of it is a set of conversation cards, free and publicly available for anyone to use, with questions designed to get people talking about addiction and recovery.

We're joining in. Our Founder & CEO Mark Prest has answered some of the cards' questions on stigma, on how media shapes what we believe addiction looks like, and on why recovery means something different to everyone. Swipe through the images to see what he had to say.

These conversations matter. They're how stigma starts to shift, with one honest exchange at a time.

Join in and let us know how you answered in the comments 👇

👉 Check out the Taking Action On Addiction website for the cards

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http://portraitsofrecovery.org.uk/

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