About Us
Starting in 2013, Bristol's Recovery Festival has become one of the biggest recovery-focused events in the region, growing in numbers and going from strength to strength, year on year.
The festival was established as a free, volunteer-led event with a sole focus of bringing together people from recovery communities across the South West, along with local peer-led communities and treatment providers. While our original focus was on recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, we now include recovery from all forms of addiction or other major life disruption.
We offer an opportunity for those still in active addiction to see that there might be a worthwhile alternative to their current lifestyle.
For those working in services we help professionals to gain a better understanding of what recovery is about and to be encouraged by seeing clients who have survived, thrived and moved on to a better life.
For those who think addiction is a dead end, it is our hope that we can challenge their assumptions.
The festival includes opportunities to listen to the stories of people in recovery and also to explore the many avenues that are available to those seeking help, be that through services, mutual aid, creative arts or any one of various therapies. The event is jam-packed with inspiration, music and fun for all.
We come together in our diversity: those in recovery, those working or volunteering within the community and those who support recovery and well-being in a variety of ways, to bring compassion, understanding and most importantly hope.
At the heart of the Festival you will find Hope, Kindness and Truth.
We all need hope. We all need kindness, both received and given. We all need a reality check about who we are, and what we are responsible for. We all need Recovery!
"My main takeaway was the positive energy that I saw from clients throughout and… positive feedback that I heard… inspirational, united, hopeful, confident, happy, and eradicating feelings of loneliness.” (Recovery Worker Feedback, 2024)
"I have everything to live for, whereas before I just had everything to die for." (Speakers’ Corner 2024)