Performing Recovery: Addiction Vulnerability and the Ethics of Representation

A live, performative book launch exploring how art, recovery and representation unsettles stigma for new knowledge

How can creativity change the way we think about addiction and recovery? What happens when people in recovery tell their stories through art, performance and co-creation?

Join us for a book launch with Dr Zoe Zontou, Associate Professor of Drama at Liverpool Hope University, with a performance by artist Will Dickie to set the scene. His performance will move between spoken word, movement and the personal-political terrain of inheritance, privilege and addiction. Alongside, with his trademark bite and radical wit, David Hoyle will host and weave through the day’s conversations, injecting insight, responsive mischief, as well as interruption where needed. To close he’ll deliver a full-throttle finale, promising provocation, pleasure and a little chaos.

Drawing on two decades of collaborative research with people who have lived experience of recovery, Zoe will share what she has learned from creative partnerships that shaped this groundbreaking book. At its heart are the voices, creativity and lived experience of people in recovery, whose ideas inform its central themes.

Through examples from the Addiction Recovery Arts Network, Fallen Angels Dance Theatre, Portraits of Recovery, the Pink Flamingos Project, small performance adventures, Will Dickie’s White Sun and other pioneering work, Zoe will show how creative practice can challenge stigma, amplify lived experience and foster connection, hope and belonging.

Chaired by Nathan Powell, Creative Director of Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres, this panel brings together author Dr Zoe Zontou, Portraits of Recovery founding director Mark Prest, artist Will Dickie and Dr Eleni Theodoropoulou of the University of Liverpool.

Join us afterwards for refreshments, chat and something social.

For artists, researchers, recovery communities, health and social care practitioners, and anyone invested in culture as a force for change, this is an invitation to understand recovery not as fixed, but as a creative, collective practice for reimagining how we live.

Recoverist Month, through exhibitions, performances and creative events, places the arts at the centre of conversations on substance use and recovery. Held every September to mark International Recovery Month, this annual programme brings artists, communities and audiences together across venues around the UK, making a vibrant contribution to the contemporary cultural landscape.