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Voices of recovery|
Activities
8 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| November 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY
PEOPLE
from around the UK
gathered in Leicester on 26
September at the sixth
national UKRF event
Creating narratives for the
recovery movement: the
good, the true and the
beautiful
. I’ve written in
DDN
about Phil Hanlon and
his call for a ‘fifth wave of
public health’
(www.afternow.co.uk) and
the UKRF event was our first attempt to explore what
the ‘good, true and beautiful’ might actually look like in
communities and services.
Fifty presenters in the main room and in ten
‘wellbeing zones’ (themed around the ‘five ways to
wellbeing’), shared their thoughts around key action and
learning that support the good (values and ethics), the true
(learning) and the beautiful.
Material generated by presenters and participants will
inform the development of a recovery manifesto for the UKRF
– which is grand, but the important thing for us is that the
day brought people from services and communities together
to share and to connect, generating energy for change. It was
a hopeful day and it was, among some other things, our
contribution to the 2014 recovery month.
There were 102 events in September’s recovery month. It
kicked off, a little early at the end of August, with a Fallen
Angels Dance Theatre workshop in Salford and a sunset
candlelit vigil in Stroud in Gloucestershire. On 1 September,
at an event hosted by the Scottish Recovery Consortium,
people gathered in Glasgow to ‘remember loved ones lost to
addiction’. Kaleidoscope in Wales supported activities
throughout September under the banner ‘My month – my
recovery’ (something Barry Eveleigh wrote about in last
month’s
DDN
) and Recovery Cymru held a number of
events in Cardiff and Barry.
People in Ireland walked in Dublin on 20 September,
while Scotland held its first recovery walk in Edinburgh on
the 27th, with North Wales walking the following day from
Colwyn Bay to Llandudno. Thousands gathered in
Manchester for the sixth UK recovery walk on 13
September and smaller, but no less important, walks took
place throughout September in Snowdon, Lancashire,
Lewisham, Derbyshire, Loughborough, Leicester,
Rotherham, Bournemouth, Bexley and Gloucestershire.
During September
The Anonymous People
film was
shown in Worksop, Cheltenham, West Bromwich, Stroud,
Gloucester and London, while the Recovery Street Festival
toured the country showing in London, Cardiff,
Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow. A number of lucky
people experienced the ‘Dear Albert’ film (a documentary
filmed over three years around a drugs service in Leicester)
at the Leicester UKRF event, which marked the end of a
Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland recovery week which
encompassed art exhibitions, flashmobs, a harm reduction
café, drama, walks, open days and a picnic.
The Umbrella Café, a dry bar, launched in Manchester
on 5 September and they’ve been putting on really
impressive events on Friday and Saturday nights ever
since. A focus on fun, creativity and celebration in
recovery month led to festivals and parties in Doncaster,
Bradford, Burnley, Brighton, Halifax, Hackney, Manchester,
Preston, Liverpool, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Henley,
Scunthorpe, Norwich and Lanarkshire.
For those who fancied something a bit more sporty
there were football competitions, fitness sessions,
sponsored cycle rides (fromWolverhampton to
Manchester), rambles, mountain climbs, funlympics and
some hardy folk even walked over seven days (185.4
miles) fromWeston-Super-Mare to Manchester to join
the UK recovery walk in Manchester.
But what does all this activity involving thousands of
people all over the UK mean? Clearly it means different
things to different people, but I think there are a number
of core themes that link all these diverse activities and
people together. At the heart of all of it is hope; the belief
that we can change, we can make things better. When we
make recovery visible we’re making hope visible and
we’re locating this hope firmly in the ‘core economy’;
families, neighbourhoods and communities. At our event
In Leicester I think that for a little while people put their
‘hats’ down and came together as community members.
That’s what I see at the recovery events I go to.
On a hillside in North Wales on 28 September I
listened to ‘service users’ share their feelings and
hopes, and I listened to a commissioner share his. For a
brief moment we were a community, a bunch of human
beings on a hill. The UKRF will continue to promote a
recovery month that celebrates the good, truth and
beauty in everyone and the huge strength and potential
that exists within communities.
A few days ago in a Westminster meeting about the
stigma faced by people with ‘substance use disorders’ I
heard someone say that the ‘time wasn’t right for a
public-facing campaign’. I felt the need to point out that
this campaign has already begun. Recovery Month is
here. Thousands are already on the move and there are
many people, even in these austere dark times, who still
have hope.
I think this is where recovery starts. Where we’ll end up
is down to us; making the path as we walk it.
Alistair Sinclair is a director of the UK Recovery
Federation (UKRF), www.ukrf.org.uk
VOICES OF RECOVERY
BEST FOOT FORWARD
The volume of activity and appetite for change during September’s ‘recovery month’ speaks
volumes about the momentum of the recovery community, says
Alistair Sinclair