'Recovery Fest' to celebrate creativity, resilience, and community

15 October 2025

The FREE event will showcase the creativity of those on their recovery journeys and their thriving community across the borough.

Residents are invited to join Wirral’s recovery community for a day of art, music and celebration.

The FREE event, dubbed ‘Recovery Fest’, will showcase the creativity of those on their recovery journeys and their thriving community across the borough.

A full-day event, Recovery Fest will take place at Future Yard in Birkenhead with additional activities at Nightingales Recovery CIC. The venues will feature live performances, art and photography exhibitions, film screenings, creative workshops, wellbeing sessions, and mutual aid meetings.

Cllr Graeme Cooper, Chair of Wirral’s Adult Social Care and Public Health Committee, said:

For many residents, recovery services and the community that surrounds them are ‘hidden in plain sight’.
Unless you access support directly, or work within services, the scale of talent, success, and resilience within the recovery community often goes unseen. Recovery Fest seeks to change that by shining a spotlight on recovery and demonstrating how individuals, families, and communities are positively transformed.

An official After Party will round off the celebrations at Rek 41, Wirral’s Sober Meeting Place.

Recovery Fest has been co-created with lived experience voices (people who are in recovery) and brings together involvement from a wide range of local organisations, including Wirral Ways, Spider Project, Nightingales Recovery CIC, YMCA, Wirral Mind, Cheshire & Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Tomorrow’s Women, Merseyside Police, Response, Wirral Change, Wirral Multicultural Organisation (WMO), and many others.

The event has also been funded by Wirral Council Public Health via the Drug and Alcohol Treatment and Recovery Grant (DATRIG) and contributes to the delivery of the Wirral Drugs Strategy 2023–2027.

While highlighting creativity, the event also aims to destigmatise addiction and recovery through visibility, as well as increasing public understanding of the recovery journey and available support.

The event takes place on Thursday 23 October 2025 with the main programme of events running at Future Yard in Birkenhead from 10:30am – 7:30pm. The After Party at Rek 41 runs from 7:30pm – 9:30pm.

To book your FREE ticket and read the full programme, visit: www.wirralways.org.uk/recovery-fest.