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‘A day of victory for recovery’ 19th September 2015, Glasgow Green

Introduction Five years ago in September 2010 the very first recovery walk in Scotland took place in Glasgow. That walk, due to policing circumstance, was confined to Glasgow Green. Glasgow was chosen as the site for the 2015 walk. The city and George Square was the iconic backdrop everyone wanted for this year’s walk. And boy did Recovery Walk Scotland 2015 deliver… Aim of the Recovery Walk and Festival In 2013 the aim of the recovery walk across the Forth Road Bridge was to gather together the recovery community and let it feel its own strength. Over 800 people crossed the bridge and created a momentum that was crystalised in the recovery summit later that year when we declared ourselves collectively a Recovery Movement. In 2014 on the Royal Mile walk in Edinburgh the aim was to gather the community together as we did before and what we learned is the Recovery Walk itself is a major intervention in public life and consciousness. We could visibly see stigma being dropped as we progressed down the royal mile. Stigma does not live where recovery is visible. In 2015 In Glasgow City we aimed to make an impact on

• The recovery community by building their ‘courage bones’ through gathering in large numbers

• Local area recovery networks by doing pre-walk mobilisation events around the country. We know there is a local post walk recovery bounce as a result of the shared experience of taking part in the national walk. This effect is magnified where people have been organised as a group prior to the event.

• On Glasgow City by the large-scale presence of people visibly in recovery. • Nationally by making connections to different strands of Scotland’s population

through the walk lead up and day itself.

 

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Event Planning Learning the lessons from previous walks and not wanting to be confined to Glasgow Green this year, the SRC convened Recovery Walk Scotland Council on 27th November 2014 to begin planning the walk. 15 delegates from a range of recovery stakeholders took part in this initial meeting and over the course of the years’ work 21 organisations had delegates on the council. Organisations represented on the Recovery Walk Scotland Council 2015:

• Glasgow Community Planning/ADP • Turning Point Scotland • Addaction Scotland • Phoenix Futures • CAIR Scotland • Team Consortium/University of Life • Scottish Recovery Consortium • Scottish Families Affected by Drugs and Alcohol • NERC (East Glasgow Recovery Community) • RISE (South Glasgow Recovery Community) • Recovery College Glasgow • FASS (Glasgow Families Support Organisation) • Recovery Ayr (Recovery Community)

 

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At that first meeting we scrutinized our feedback from the 2014 walk in Edinburgh. We had a presentation from the very successful UK Recovery Walk in Manchester in 2014. We also had a member present who helped organise the Brighton UK recovery walk in 2013. So our first order of business was to learn from others. The key learning points we took from all of that were:

• Get planning permissions / license applications in hard and fast and very early – the date helps everything from fundraising to mobilising and it can’t come too soon.

• Start fundraising as soon as you can from within your own community stakeholders

• The more we mobilise in local areas and they are involved; the greater the turnout on the day and the greater the post walk recovery bounce in those areas.

• People want more than a walk- a festival that allows us to celebrate and connect more.

What we added from our own values were:

• The event is about we can all bring to the party- everyone contributing what they can. Our aim is that the walk eventually grows independent of the SRC.

• We only commit to spend as we fundraise and have it in the bank- not spending on promise. No one is underwriting the event, so we can only spend what we raise in funds.

The group met monthly to vision, plan, fundraise and mobilise for the walk. They met after the walk to consider the feedback and agree the hand on to Recovery Walk Scotland 2016 Council.

 

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The Event Agenda - What did we create together?

“We all had a beautiful and moving day. It was so inspirational and a breath of fresh recovery air”

Highland Recovery Collective (report). The event was three events rolled into one

• Roses on the Clyde Ceremony – to honour that year’s losses to addiction and in particular to mark the recently announced numbers of drug deaths in 2014/15

• Recovery Walk Scotland 2015 – a recovery walk through the city centre at peak time on a Saturday.

• Recovery festival and Village- music, shares, speeches, and stalls/ healing area on the village green.

The full event programme is attached to the this report as appendix 1

“It was a very, very emotional day but amazing still buzzing!!” Karen (Facebook)

 

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Event Support - Finance The Walk Council 2015 combined efforts raised £23,985 for the costs of the event. The support funds came from the following organisations:

• South Ayrshire ADP • Fife ADP • Highlands ADP • Clackmannanshire ADP • Falkirk ADP • Stirling ADP • Glasgow ADP • Edinburgh ADP • Scottish Recovery Consortium • Turning Point Scotland • Addaction Scotland • Crossreach • Phoenix Futures • Business Contributions in cash and kind

The funds paid for the event infrastructure; staging/ pa/ generators/toilets/ professional stewards and professional training for 20 community stewards. Included in the budget were the costs of barriers, catering marquee, tables and chairs, children’s play area, hi-viz vests, stage banners and walk banners/flags, first aid, license costs, event insurance, posters and route plan maps. The event film and photographer, roses, volunteer expenses and the councils cost for some of the pre-walk locality events were also paid for out of this amount. Our financial goal was met; we have £115 to hand over to RWS 2016 council fundraising and a good supply of resources; logo, banners, vests, that can be used again. We also have a souvenir film of the day to help with next years walk mobilisation.

4%   3%  

2%  

4%  

9%  2%  

4%  

44%  

4%  

4%  

1%   9%  4%  

2%  

4%  

Funding  Breakdown  Addaction  

Business  Donations  

Clackmannanshire  ADP  

Crossreach  

Edinburgh  City  ADP  

Falkirk  ADP  

Fife  ADP  

Glasgow  ADP  

Highland  ADP  

Phoenix  Futures  

Private  Contributions  

Scottish  Recovery  Consortium  

South  Ayrshire  ADP  

Stirling  ADP  

Turning  Point  Scotland  

 

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Event Mobilisation There were 11 local warm up events hosted round Scotland by the Walk council, by local ADP’s by local recovery communities and by local treatment agencies. These events were held in July, August and early September by: Scottish Recovery Consortium Office (Glasgow) Glasgow North West Recovery Community Possil Drop in Bathgate recovery hub Huntly recovery café (Aberdeenshire) HMP Perth Recovery Café (Perth) Recovery Ayr/South Ayrshire ADP (Ayr) Aberdeen in Recovery in the Foyer (Aberdeen) Highlands ADP (Inverness) Oban Addaction (Argyll and Bute) Pop up recovery café in Stenhousemuir (Falkirk) Restoration Recovery Café (Fife) Recovery Walk Council members led each local session in café style where participants explored why we walk and why they might walk. They watched films of previous walks, heard testimony of people who had walked and what it meant to them. This is the first time we have ever attempted local mobilisation events for a recovery walk. This helped get localities thinking and acting in preparation for the walk in good time to get buses organised and paid for. Each of the 31 ADP areas was given a blank flag by the council on which to create an area wide recovery flag to bring to the walk. The prisons also got a flag to represent prison recovery. Event

 

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Participation - Who Came?

“A beautiful sea of recovery” Addaction Sunny Govan (Facebook)

Over 1,300 people pre-registered to take part in Recovery Walk Scotland 2015. However on the day around 2000 people took part in the walk through the city centre. This is the first time that more people turned up than had been pre-registered for an event. In addition over 60 people took part in a recovery walk inside Perth Prison on Friday 18th September created for prisoners in recovery to be part of the national walk experience. Analysis of Pre- Registration data People from 29/31 ADP areas were on the walk. In the data collected by registration forms we could see that 27 out 31 ADP areas had representation on the walk and from our visual update on the day we could see a further 2 ADP’s areas with their flags who had not been captured on pre-registration data. This was the first truly national recovery walk in Scotland. 61% of participants were in recovery, 39% were treatment/ service providers, 9% family or friends, 6% other. It was possible to tick more than one status box given that people in recovery also work as service provider etc. The walk engaged 3 of the key recovery stakeholder areas that it set out to. People in recovery, treatment providers and family members were consciously and deliberately mobilised to attend this walk, they came. 52% participants were attending their first recovery walk, 48% had attended one before. As evidenced by rising numbers of walk participants; we have retained people who previously attended a walk and introduced the experience to large group of new people.

 

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Event Participation - Who Contributed?

“On the day I was a steward with my partner. It was a fantastic day but also a day to reflect on the people who are no longer with us. It was very emotional placing the roses on the Clyde but also it was very emotional walking through the heart of Glasgow. It was

great to catch up with so many friends that I have met through my recovery journey. It was a day of being proud, a celebration and a day to remember”

Volunteer Walk Steward Recovery Walk Council 2015 members:

• 10 professional stewards • 20 newly professionally trained stewards from Glasgow Recovery Communities • 70 Basic stewards: volunteers who kept the walk safe. • 40 people contributed a speech, a share, and music or compered either on the

roses stage or the main stage. • 10 Recovery Media crew recorded the day for posterity • 11 organisations had gazebos or tents on the village green • 40 people hosted the recovery village offering films, seed bombs, fruit ‘mock’

tails, massages, hair braiding, temporary tattoos, music in the tents and gazebos around the green.

• 4 Scottish Recovery Consortium staff • 7/9 Scottish Recovery Consortium board members • Uncounted professional crews put up tents, delivered toilets, manned first aid,

fed us and took away rubbish.

58%  22%  

19%  

1%  

Recovery  Walk  Scotland  Registration  Demographic  

Person  in  Recovery     ADP/Treatment  Provider   Other   I  do  not  want  to  answer  

 

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Immediate Impact of the Event - Recovery Visibility

“The flags, the people I spoke to from lowlands to highlands and everywhere in between.”

Anonymous Survey Monkey Response

• 35% of participants thought the event made recovery from addiction more visible in their local areas. Examples given of this were – different and more people on the bus to the walk this year, by working with addiction services, people talking more openly, just by gathering and sharing of info, communities coming together, the flags on the walk, recovery orientated projects being developed in the local area.

• 50% thought recovery from addiction is more visible in Glasgow now. Examples of this given were, walking through George Square, the recognition and acknowledgement from the general public as we were walking, by the turnout on the walk, walking through the city being cheered on by the public.

• 64% thought that recovery from addiction is more visible nationally. Facebook and social media are credited with carrying this message with regular photos and feeds on recovery. The recovery walk was given as an example and the SRC was given also as an example of how recovery is becoming more nationally visible. Passing the Hope over Fear rally and the rally’s positive response to the walk coming through George Square was an example given by many of a new kind of visibility in public life for recovery from addiction.

 

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Immediate Impact of the Event – Recovery Connections

“Amazing exchange of energy at George Square” Ann (Facebook)

“The sense of community was electric” Lisa (Facebook)

• 70% of people made connections with people or ideas (on the day or in the lead

up to it) that they found helpful in building recovery from addictions. Examples given were– that recovery is happening in many different places, holding a recovery walk in my area now, established a theme for our recovery month, listening to new ideas and swapping them, brilliant to see people who were only telephone or social media contacts, discussed the idea of a group for peers who now work in the addiction field, someone was asked to do a talk on the back of attending the walk, others made contact with other people from their local area at the walk.

“I mentioned to somebody that I’d like to see/hear about some fellow Irish people in

recovery. They were able to tell me where to find some.”

 

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Immediate Impact of the Event - Social Media

“We owned a corner of Facebook on Sunday morning after the walk” Kuladharini

The evening of Recovery Walk Scotland 2015 saw the SRC begin to engage with people in the online space, and this had a phenomenal impact. Our goal as online hosts is to support the positive energy and activity generated by the Walk. We know that people have a lot of leftover energy after the walk that needs to go somewhere. We create a space for people to continue to connect, and to stay safe with the Recovery Walk ‘high’ and its subsequent come-down. We also deliberately engaged with people in the context of their own geographical communities, in order to build on the banners that people had proudly made - and to reflect back on the closing speech given by Kuladharini that encouraged communities to notice the significance of their existence. This engagement strategy has been a phenomenal success. We know people enjoyed the connection on social media (primarily Facebook) through the anecdotal evidence. But a look at the Facebook Insights data makes for some astonishing reading. Firstly, there is post reach. This is the amount of people who have seen a particular post. Normal Facebook post reach for the SRC, during our everyday business lies within the range of 1000 to 2000 people. During the week commencing the 17th September, we saw a sharp increase to a sustained post reach of just under 12,000 and held on the Facebook page for two to three days, returning to the average on 23rd September. Our number of ‘Likes’ followed a similar trend. We now have 1267 page ‘Likes’ that’s people who nominate to see all our posts on their newsfeed. The average number of people Liking any individual post has gone up five-fold over the period (from 23 to 113 averages Sept-Oct). People commenting on our page trebled. People sharing posts from our page have doubled. Of the people who are actively engaged with our feeds, 64% of our audience is women. Most of our audience comes from the UK (Glasgow first, then London, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen). Outside the UK, we have a strong following from the USA, then Ireland, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands. Most of the traffic to our social media comes directly from our own webpage www.scottishrecoveryconsortium.org - this is great news for our communications strategy, as we want to encourage the use of our webpage as an online community in the future. We aim to build on this further by developing a national network of ‘social reporters’ to make this community become even more ‘alive’.

 

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The Recovery Bounce “I posted this picture (of the recovery walk) in a private group last night with a little story of an event in the day. A young woman replied who said she was just days in recovery and was feeling hopeless until she saw this photo. The healing from these events does

not end when the day ends. Thanks again SRC" Sandra (Facebook)

There is what we have termed a ‘bounce’ after recovery events that work well. What we mean by that is a positive recovery outcome that is attributable to having taking part in the event. The bounce can take a few months to see. We can clearly see now some of the 2014 recovery walk Scotland bounce. In Edinburgh city there has been a growth in local recovery communities around each of the new recovery hubs. They are building themselves into a recovery alliance. There is also an increase in the number of Recovery Café’s in the area around Edinburgh: West Lothians and Mid and East Lothians. There are a great many reasons why this can be, and the walk may have been one of them. Its too soon to see what the bounce might be for this 2015 walk, though we are noticing a higher degree of ADP interest in recovery café’s / workforce development and colleges. We are sensing another level of openness to recovery. “Today, five years after the first recovery walk took place in Glasgow, we can see direct evidence of another quantum leap forward in the recovery movement in Scotland. The

movement is maturing and seeing itself as part of a wider community of change makers in Scotland. 2000 walkers from every part of Scotland demonstrated the wealth of talent that had been lost to addiction, now fully and beautifully reclaimed in recovery. We can

all only benefit from that." Scottish Recovery Consortium Blog

 

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What Did We Learn? This year’s effort in mobilisation, stakeholder funding and council representation all proved fruitful and will be continued into 2016. The biggest learning was how far the recovery walk contributes to all recovery outcomes. The recovery walk builds your recovery outcomes whether you are an individual in recovery or recovery community, a treatment provider, an ADP, or a recovery consortium like the SRC. The walk and festival allows all five ways to wellbeing to be fully expressed by individuals, groups and organisations. The event Connects people interested in recovery in local areas and create the basis for ROSC. The very existence of the event provides the opportunity to Give - time, money, energy, ideas, and resource and thus allows everyone to feel part of a positive movement for change. Being at the event allows you to Notice the whole recovery movement together and how it feels when you are immersed in a culture of positivity, that things become possible that were unimagined before. You Learn at the event, everything from how to mobilise a bus load of people to get to the walk, how to build a recovery community from all the other people taking part and about long term recovery and the national picture from the stages and shares. The Roses and Stage allowed us the opportunity to share deeper thoughts and ideas emerging from within the recovery movement itself. It is an Active event where you are fully engaged in direct recovery action. The event is a public manifestation of the ‘better than well’ effect and directly challenges the stigma that can surround public perceptions of addiction recovery. Next Steps The Walk Council 2015 has agreed with the SRC suggestion that the next walk be held in Forth Valley area-either in Stirling or Falkirk. The 2016 council will be convened before the Christmas break. Kuladharini Chief Executive Scottish Recovery Consortium

 

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Appendix 1