Art for the Recovery Community: Accessible, Creative Healing
Art
Since 2019, Art for the Recovery Community (ARC) has been uplifting the works and talents of local artists who are in addiction recovery at each summer’s annual festival. ARC Artistic Director Indigo Cook is an artist whose passion for community engagement has driven them to get involved in harm reduction initiatives. With this enthusiasm for creative expression and experience in community organizing already in place, Indigo’s idea for ARC’s inaugural festival came to fruition after talking to their mother—former president of the Utah Society of Addiction Medicine (UTSAM) Dr. Paula Cook. “She was marveling about all the talented artists she encouraged every day in her line of work,” says Indigo. Shortly after, they “typed up a proposal for an art festival, [Paula] passed it on to UTSAM and we got to work,” Indigo explains.
“[We’re keeping] a low barrier to access for a community that traditionally suffers from stigma and marginalization.”
As ARC’s first sponsor, UTSAM “continue[s] to provide logistical support in addition to securing funding from the DHHS Office of Substance Use and Mental Health,” says Indigo. In addition, the Salt Lake City Arts Council has provided grant funding to ARC for the last two years. Indigo shouts out a few more recovery-focused local organizations, including Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness (USARA), the Salt Lake City VA, Odyssey House of Utah, First Step House and Fit to Recover, as enthusiastic supporters of the festival. ARC welcomes artists and performers of all disciplines: poetry, photography, visual art, spoken word, music, dance and beyond. A wide range of creative mediums come together to “celebrate the process of recovery and utilize art’s unique power to open, expand and deepen channels of of communication and understanding within our community.” Inclusivity and accessibility are key to welcoming any and all artists in recovery, regardless of where they are in their recovery journey. Keeping artist applications simple and accessible is important part of what Indigo describes as “[keeping] a low barrier to access for a community that traditionally suffers from stigma and marginalization.”
ARC intentionally cultivates a joyous, celebrative environment to challenge dominant—and often harmful—narratives surrounding addiction. “So much of the cultural discourse around substance use and recovery is about hardship and suffering,” explains Indigo, who adds that “pushing back against that narrative” has been one of the greatest motivations driving ARC. “The recovery community is already thriving with power and creativity—we simply wanted to make a space to honor that spirit and to dedicate a summer evening to celebration and joy,” they say. Indigo also speaks to the learning experiences stemming from their involvement in the recovery community, for which they express gratitude.
“The recovery community is already thriving with power and creativity.”
Due to COVID-19, ARC hosted their 2020 festival entirely online, which led to then-unrealized connections with the broader recovery community outside of Salt Lake City. “It ended up being a unique opportunity to reach artists in more rural parts of Utah, especially down south, that wouldn’t have been able to be involved up in the city,” says Indigo. Not wanting to lose this extended reach with the return to in-person events, ARC decided to host an additional festival in Moab after they received an offer from Moab Regional Hospital to support the event’s kickoff. ARC’s second annual Moab festival took place on August 2 this year, supported by the Moab Regional Recovery Center and the Grand County branch of USARA. The common values of community, celebration and art, keep the two festivals closely linked. “It’s been a great experience working with the local recovery community to discuss how to make ARC accessible and welcoming according to the unique needs of a more rural, historically underserved area,” Indigo says. One of the most impactful aspects of the Moab festival, according to Indigo, is the ability to display artwork created by incarcerated folks through Moab Regional Recovery Center and USARA’s work in the Grand County jail.
The importance of art for community connection and mental health is especially pronounced in the recovery community. Indigo quotes one of ARC’s Moab artists, Carey Jones, who says, “Recovery has given me a life I could not have otherwise. Everything I do is toward recovery. Art is what makes us human.” Indigo sees the parallels between journeys of recovery and artistic expression: “There’s no one path to recovery just as there’s no one path to creativity, and our communities (and art festivals) are all the stronger and more beautiful for it,” they explain. The diversity of artists in community with one another through ARC has had a profound impact on Indigo, who shares that the folks who have been involved throughout ARC’s six-year run have “become a collection of treasured friends and collaborators.” Indigo also describes the new people they have the pleasure of meeting at each year’s festival are “[in] endless waves of creativity and passion” that reinforce the idea that “the community is just as broad as it is deep.”
“There’s no one path to recovery just as there’s no one path to creativity.”
ARC doesn’t have any grand plans for major expansion; they only wish to continue to facilitate creative experiences and community connections by working towards horizontal growth. “It can be easy to get caught up in concepts of growth that are tied to numbers, outputs and capitalist expectations of production and expansion,” explains Indigo, but ARC isn’t motivated by lofty dreams of fancy venues and popularity. Instead, Indigo says they aspire to a more patient, stable and transformative means of growth—the hope is that ARC “grow(s) by simply continuing to be a space for the community to return to year after year.”
This year’s Salt Lake City festival takes place on August 13 on the Spy Hop Rooftop, a brand-new location for ARC in its sixth iteration. The gallery is open from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., with an evening concert beginning at 7:00 p.m. ARC is free and open to the public. Visit artfortherecoverycommunity.com for more information or to register to be a part of the festival!
Read more about local art exhibits:
Mestizo Arts Presents: Home Isn’t Dead; It Isn’t Even Home
Lunares Explores the Unseen Power of Tears in Lágrimas: Rain, Glitter