A new book by Dr Zoe Zontou exploring the role of creativity in addiction recovery launched at a special event at Liverpool Everyman.
Performing Recovery: Addiction, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Representation, published by Routledge, draws on more than 20 years of research and collaboration to examine how arts and creative practice can support recovery, challenge stigma and enable people with lived experience to tell their own stories.
Dr Zontou, Associate Professor at Liverpool Hope University, places the experiences of people in recovery at the heart of the book, exploring what creativity in recovery means in people’s everyday lives.
The launch, held at Liverpool Everyman on 30 September as part of Recoverist Month, brought together artists, academics, recovery communities and practitioners to explore the relationship between creativity, addiction and recovery.
Hosted by performer David Hoyle, the event included a live extract from Liverpool artist Will Dickie’s acclaimed one-person show White Sun, which explores themes including inheritance, privilege and addiction.
A panel discussion, chaired by Nathan Powell, Creative Director of Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres, featured Dr Zontou alongside Will Dickie, Dr Eleni Theodoropoulou, a sociologist of health and illness specialising in drug and alcohol use at the University of Liverpool, and Mark Prest, Founding Director of Portraits of Recovery.
Creativity and recovery
At the heart of Performing Recovery is a challenge to conventional understandings of addiction and treatment.
Dr Zontou argues that people should not be defined by substance use, but recognised for the multiple roles they occupy within their families, communities and wider society.
“Performing Recovery makes the case for a different way of thinking about addiction: one in which people are not defined by their substance use, but are recognised as artists, performers, collaborators, friends, family members and citizens, with their creativity and lived experience treated not as an afterthought to recovery, but as part of what recovery can be.”
The research draws on the work of a number of arts and community organisations, including the Merseyside Creative Recovery Network, Portraits of Recovery, Fallen Angels Dance Theatre and Liverpool’s Pink Flamingos.
Together, their work demonstrates how artistic and cultural participation can provide opportunities for expression, connection and representation, while also challenging the stigma associated with addiction.
Liverpool’s history of innovation
The book also explores Liverpool’s longstanding role in developing innovative approaches to addiction and recovery.
Dr Zontou highlights the Mersey Model of Harm Reduction, developed in the 1980s, and the establishment of needle exchange services during the HIV epidemic as examples of approaches that placed harm reduction, community and meaningful activity at the centre of responses to drug use.
She argues that this history has contributed to a culture of creative thinking and community-led support in the city.
More recent developments include The Brink, the Recovery Walk, first held in Liverpool in 2009, and the Merseyside Creative Recovery Network, which brings together artists, performers, makers and community groups to advocate for the cultural representation of people in recovery across the Liverpool City Region.
The research highlights the potential for Liverpool’s experience to contribute to wider discussions around addiction, recovery and public health, particularly through greater recognition of cultural participation and lived experience.
Bringing research and practice together
The book launch formed part of Recoverist Month, an annual programme of exhibitions, performances and creative events led by arts organisation Portraits of Recovery.
Taking place across Liverpool, Chester and Greater Manchester, the programme places arts and culture at the centre of conversations about substance use and recovery.
Mark Prest, Founding Director of Portraits of Recovery, who organised the launch, said: “It explores how art can creatively shape and change the way we think about addiction and recovery and what happens when people in recovery rewrite the narrative through art, performance and co-creation.”
The launch provided an opportunity to bring together academic research, artistic practice and lived experience – reflecting the collaborative approach at the heart of Dr Zontou’s research.
Performing Recovery: Addiction, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Representation is published by Routledge.