Manchester based project supports employability through the Japanese art of 'Kintsugi'.

Pioneering visual arts organisation Portraits of Recovery (PORe) is working with artists and people in recovery from substance use, from Greater Manchester, on a new project called The Repair Centre.

The Repair Centre supports people in recovery facing additional barriers to work, towards education, employment and volunteering opportunities.

By upskilling through creative, practical, and soft skill development, PORe facilitates new thinking about recovery processes and acts of repair (Kintsugi).

Kintsugi – a ceramic act of repair made with painstaking time and care - documents an object's history, whilst making it stronger and arguably more beautiful.

Kintsugi philosophy states that something new, useful, and more interesting can come out of damage, loss, and change, paralleled here in the human stories of people in recovery. 

The programme supports individuals to develop new interests whilst promoting wellbeing through high quality, hands-on learning, and engagement with contemporary art.

A blended approach to learning featuring online and in-person artist-led workshops offers participants useful training, as well as insights into the creative/cultural industries.

Project artist Jayne Gosnall says: "Creativity has been a vital part of my recovery over the last 10 years, and I’ve been a participant on three projects with Portraits of Recovery.

"I'm so proud of my journey, and this time around I'm collaborating as an artist on The Repair Centre!" 

Jayne will be leading workshops based on her own textile repair practice, which includes natural dyeing, darning, redesigning and recycling fabrics.

Jayne mends in a way inspired by traditions created out of poverty, resourcefulness and skills passed from generation to generation, such as Japanese methods of Sashiko and Boro.

Portraits of Recovery Director, Mark Prest says “Through object making and acts of repair this project challenges stigmatized perceptions of the recovery community by exploring how people often viewed as broken and unfit for purpose, are renewed, transformed and a valuable asset to society.”

Project partners include long-standing collaborators Manchester Metropolitan University, Boiler House and Manchester Craft and Design Centre.

By working directly with those in recovery, PORe have been supporting people into employment, further education or volunteering for the past 11 years.

The organisation’s work increases access to high quality cultural opportunity, reimagining ways in which people and communities affected by substance use and in recovery are represented and understood.

The course continues over 14 weeks, leading up to a public event in May. Find out more at: www.portraitsofrecovery.org.uk/

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