Sober festival in Glasgow aims to normalise recovery
Recovery Connects is a free, family friendly event and will take place in Queen's Park Arena, Glasgow again on July 6, with the lineup featuring 90s staples and former member of The Prodigy Leeroy Thornhill headlining.
Created by the Recovery Collective, a group formed by three friends in addiction recovery, the festival provides a space to challenge the stigma around addiction and celebrate the fact that people who struggle with substance abuse issues can and do heal.
READ MORE: See the full translated lyrics of Kneecap's new single 'The Recap'
Eddie Clarke told the Sunday National that Recovery Connects was born from a shared love of music and an understanding that a booze-free event could be crucial for helping those in the first stages of sobriety socialise and in normalising recovery: 'People in early recovery can find themselves unable to find that kind of enjoyment or socialisation.
'When you're in recovery, being in the standard festival environment where there's heavy drink and drug use is difficult. It drains your social battery and makes you irritable; you start to get anxious and all kinds of messed up — people in recovery are very sensitive to their environments.'
'That's why we started an alcohol-free festival. It was quite small at first; we only had funding from the National Lottery but about 500 people came through the doors that first year in Queen's Park.
'After that first event, we wanted to normalise it [recovery], so we worked on widening the appeal for the average Joe who isn't necessarily in recovery but just wants to come along and enjoy good music without people being drunk or under the influence around them.
'Last year, we had about 2400 attendees — Alan McGee, the Oasis manager, really helped us out with getting bigger acts booked, like Bez from Happy Mondays, and that's helped improve numbers massively.'
While music is a huge part of the festival, Recovery Connects also provides a wealth of resources for those struggling with a range of issues, like homelessness, active addiction and mental illness.
One of this year's main sponsors, Abbeycare Scotland, a rehabilitation centre in Erskine, is one of multiple organisations with stalls at the festival to provide resources for attendees, alongside drama group In Kahoots which focuses on those in addiction recovery, and Mind the Men, a support service for men battling mental health issues.
Abbeycare Scotland, above, also had a stall at last year's festival (Image: Quantum Communications)Though the appeal has widened, Clarke highlighted that the main focus is still recovery: 'Obviously it's family-friendly and it's open to everyone but we want to keep the connection to recovery there.
'Last year we started a competition for folk in recovery who are quite creatively talented where they can apply to open up the festival. We did it again for this year's and we want to keep that running now that we're getting bigger acts who aren't always related to recovery.'
READ MORE: I saw Tate McRae at Glasgow's Hydro – she knows her audience
With the price of booking musical acts rising and the festival being restricted to only one day of the year, the Recovery Collective is looking to develop its work into wider community outreach projects.
Clarke added: 'We'd still like to do more music events throughout the year but we're also looking at creative writing, short films, documentaries, things like that, to get more people coming along and getting involved to turn it into a peer support group.
'We're also looking to get more people volunteering with us, so that's the rough vision for the next few years.'
In terms of the wider stigma surrounding addiction, Clarke noted that while societal attitudes have been shifting and there is still a clear gap in treatment qualities between the socioeconomic classes, the main focus for those taking steps towards sobriety should be on their own journeys and their inner circles: 'As long as we do the work on ourselves, get into recovery and have a bit of acceptance and understanding, other people's views don't really matter.'
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