A new book that celebrates Liverpool's progressive outlook on creative health launches with a bang at Liverpool Everyman at the end of this month.
Performing Recovery, by Liverpool academic Dr Zoe Zontou, explores the radical work taking place across the region, where the arts are being used to support recovery from addiction and challenge stigma.
Drawing on 20 years of research and collaboration, the Liverpool Hope University associate professor's book looks beyond conventional ideas of addiction and treatment to focus on "what creativity in recovery actually feels like and means in people’s everyday lives".
At the book's heart are the experiences of many local people who have worked with art, performance and creative expression to make sense of their recovery and to tell their own stories.
Zontou argues that UK drug policy and the academic debates surrounding it still too often overlook the importance of cultural representation and meaningful participation in the arts for people in recovery.
The associate professor of drama’s ambition is for Liverpool’s experience to inform the "national conversation", and for policymakers to listen to the people and communities who have been developing these approaches on the ground.
The launch event, on 30 September 2026, will be hosted by queer "performance avalanche" David Hoyle and will feature a live extract from Liverpool artist WilL Dickie's acclaimed one person show White Sun, which navigates the tensions of inheritance, privilege and addiction.
A panel discussion, chaired by Nathan Powell, creative director of Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres, will bring together the author with Dickie, Dr Eleni Theodoropoulou, a sociologist of health and illness specialising in drug and alcohol use at University of Liverpool and Mark Prest, founding director of arts organisation Portraits of Recovery, which features in the book.
Other arts and cultural organisations included in Zontou's research include Fallen Angels Dance Theatre, who work in Liverpool and Chester and Liverpool's Pink Flamingos.
Zontou said:
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.
When it comes to Liverpool, Zontou says the city has "consistently pioneered innovative approaches to addiction and recovery", with a history of putting harm reduction, community and meaningful activity at the heart of its response.
Dame Carol Black’s groundbreaking 2021 review highlighted the importance of meaningful activity alongside treatment, she said.
But Liverpool was developing this kind of thinking decades earlier, through the 1986 Mersey Model of Harm Reduction and the creation of needle exchange networks during the HIV epidemic.
Zontou said that this "enlightened public health approach", which prioritised reducing the physical and social harms associated with drug use rather than insisting on immediate abstinence, contributed to creating a culture of creative thinking and meaningful support in the city.
That legacy can be seen in projects including The Brink, the UK’s first dry
bar, the inaugural Recovery Walk in 2009, organised by Faces and Voices of
Recovery and the growing role of people with lived experience such as Walton MP Dan Carden, who broke new ground as the first politician to speak openly about his recovery from addiction in Parliament she said.And more recently, the development of 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.
Mark Prest, founder director, Portraits of Recovery, one of the organisations featured in the book, has organised the launch. He said:
This event is framed as a live, performative book launch exploring how art, recovery and representation unsettles stigma for new knowledge.
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 event is open to anyone curious about how artists and recovery communities are reshaping conversations about addiction, vulnerability and belonging. It is of particular interest to artists, researchers, recovery communities, health and social care practitioners, and people who want to experience recovery as a creative, collective practice rather than a fixed destination.
The book's full title is Performing Recovery: Addiction, Vulnerability and the Ethics of Representation and it is published by Routledge.
The launch forms part of Recoverist Month, a programme of exhibitions, performances and creative events. Led by arts organisation Portraits of Recovery, Recoverist Month, held every September, places the arts at the centre of conversations on substance use and recovery. This year, events are taking place across Liverpool, Chester and Greater Manchester.
The launch takes place on 30 September 2026 1pm-3pm at the Everyman, 5-11 Hope Street, Liverpool L1 9BH. Tickets are free and can be booked here
