Photo Voice - My Life in Recovery
This exhibition is made by people in recovery who participated in our Photovoice project in the period of July to November 2020, through meetings at the association “Celebrate Recovery” in Sarajevo.
How did it all start?
The project ERANID REC-PATH started in 2017 and was funded by the National Health Ministries in Belgium, England, the Netherlands and Scotland. The aim of the project was to examine gender differences in using different „pathways to recovery“ as well as changes in personal wellbeing and the use of different services for recovery.
The project included „Life in Recovery“ survey as a tool to gather participants in four main countries, and as part of the ERANID project, cooperation with Recovered Users Network - RUN was established, aiming to expand international database and subjective experiences across Europe.
The association ‘Celebrate Recovery’ from Sarajevo, BiH, is the coordinator of RUN members, and as such, we joined in Life in Recovery research, as well as qualitative research using an innovative tool – photovoice – in cooperation with the University in Gent, Belgium and with the photographer.
Photovoice is a participatory research method, in which people make photographs and talk about them as a way of establishing personal and social change (Wang & Burris, 1994). Within the photovoice approach, all participants in the process are co-researchers and play a major role in research. The emphasis is on understanding the recovery pathways of addiction with a focus on lived experiences, through creating shared dialogues about recovery through the creation of art.
The question with which we began our research was “What led you to change and what’s helping you to keep that change?” By answering this and similar questions, we chose the themes “Me Time” and “New Identity”, alongside several sub-themes which were important to us and which we represented through photography.
Through the medium of photography, we started telling our stories of recovery.
As part of Photovoice, we organised a photography course for all participants, where our photographer, Katie McCraw, taught us to better understand and use the language and method of photography to create pictures that would be a reflection of our personal change.
We shared photographs and experiences within the group, and in this way gave a voice to our personal stories of recovery.
This is our voice. Welcome.
How did it all start?
The project ERANID REC-PATH started in 2017 and was funded by the National Health Ministries in Belgium, England, the Netherlands and Scotland. The aim of the project was to examine gender differences in using different „pathways to recovery“ as well as changes in personal wellbeing and the use of different services for recovery.
The project included „Life in Recovery“ survey as a tool to gather participants in four main countries, and as part of the ERANID project, cooperation with Recovered Users Network - RUN was established, aiming to expand international database and subjective experiences across Europe.
The association ‘Celebrate Recovery’ from Sarajevo, BiH, is the coordinator of RUN members, and as such, we joined in Life in Recovery research, as well as qualitative research using an innovative tool – photovoice – in cooperation with the University in Gent, Belgium and with the photographer.
Photovoice is a participatory research method, in which people make photographs and talk about them as a way of establishing personal and social change (Wang & Burris, 1994). Within the photovoice approach, all participants in the process are co-researchers and play a major role in research. The emphasis is on understanding the recovery pathways of addiction with a focus on lived experiences, through creating shared dialogues about recovery through the creation of art.
The question with which we began our research was “What led you to change and what’s helping you to keep that change?” By answering this and similar questions, we chose the themes “Me Time” and “New Identity”, alongside several sub-themes which were important to us and which we represented through photography.
Through the medium of photography, we started telling our stories of recovery.
As part of Photovoice, we organised a photography course for all participants, where our photographer, Katie McCraw, taught us to better understand and use the language and method of photography to create pictures that would be a reflection of our personal change.
We shared photographs and experiences within the group, and in this way gave a voice to our personal stories of recovery.
This is our voice. Welcome.
