Recoverist Month is back

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 the Whitworth, Castlefield Gallery, HOME and Manchester Museum.

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 contemporary arts organisation Portraits of Recovery (PORe) in 2023.

Three exhibitions, all co-produced by Portraits of Recovery, run throughout the month. Recoverist Curators: Re-imagining the World We Live In, at the Whitworth (until June 2026) is co-curated by five people in recovery. It weaves recovery stories and personal artefacts amongst contemporary artworks from the likes of Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Wolfgang Tillmans, bringing them new meanings.

Whilst ANEW Way to Peel an Orange at Castlefield Gallery (until 19 October 2025) showcases artworks co-created between designer Joe Hartley and the ANEW recovery community 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 a 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. (HOME Granada Foundation Galleries 1 & 2, 6 September 2025 - 11 January 2026).

The premiere of Small Hours: A Portrait of Alcoholism by award-winning filmmaker and Royal College of Art graduate Oliver Wyndham Lewis will be followed by a live Q&A with its creator. Narrated by Robert Bathurst (Downton Abbey, Cold Feet, Toast of London), the hand painted animation about an artist in the end stages of alcoholism, captures those critical moments in life that lead us down wildly different paths. (Everyman Manchester St. Johns cinema, 22 September 2025, 6pm - 7.30pm)

Curated and facilitated by artist Divine Southgate-Smith, African Objects: Psychoactives, Spirituality and Mental Health brings together African-Caribbean people with lived experience of recovery from substance use and/or mental health issues. Responding to objects carefully selected from Manchester Museum’s Living Cultures collection, this project explored cultural heritage and identity, routes to spirituality and recovery through poetry, music and storytelling. (Manchester Museum Living Worlds gallery, 30 September 2025, 6-8pm)

And the Chaordic Symposium (the Whitworth art gallery, 25 September 2025) will share insights into the transformative power of the arts for recovery, showcasing outcomes from a major three-year commissioning programme. delivered in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery, the Whitworth and Castlefield Gallery. Speakers include Dame Carol Black, who was commissioned by the UK Government to produce an independent review of drug treatment in 2020/21 and arts and health expert Dr Clive Parkinson.

Recoverist Month is the brainchild of Mark Prest, founding director of contemporary arts organisation Portraits of Recovery (PORe) and himself a man in recovery.

PORe 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.