Collaborative Projects
Geese Theatre Company: Geese Theatre UK
In 2024, SUIT supported 3 incredible projects with The Geese Theatre. Our clients and volunteers found the project an amazing experience, full of connection, support, and empowerment.
“I was nervous, but I realised there was no need to be nervous at all. It’s changed me. In my heart… because I'm not frightened to do things that I haven't done before now. From just doing this, out of my comfort zone…this took me out of doing the same stuff again and again, given me purpose and so much confidence. I want to do things out of my comfort zone now and take positive risks with my creativity. Totally life changing!”
“It's possibly one of the most fun things I've ever done. Right from the first day, we did games, we did little…mind bending puzzles…everything was fun to do! The Geese are so supportive, so professional, and really knew what they were doing. We made a tight group even tighter, more connected; we were let into each other’s world… that part of it is fantastic. We go to groups together, but this was different”.
“My own sense of what I can do has changed. I feel I can do anything now. All the positive responses, the support from Christiane & Fallon at SUIT, my friends who came along to the performance; they didn’t know what to expect and seeing what a tight and polished performance it was, I had lovely personal comments. I've been like a flower blooming… since I started SUIT’s art group last year it has made all the difference to me. Positive difference, self-esteem, confidence. Isn’t it nice when you’re amongst people and when you speak they will now listen properly.”
“I didn't think I could do much with my life…I'm a bit older, I did my degree when I was in my 20s and I never did anything with it. I was addicted for 25 years, and I've just been working, dead end jobs for the last 10 years. I want to do more now. I want to help people. I just want to do more, and it's all through this Geese project!”
Geese develop creative and personal skills and strengthen recovery journeys. Our clients have attended Fear of Flying, a Geese performance created with and for people in recovery, and each community project has included workshops for SUIT clients to co-create their own performance. These performances, held at the https://www.newhamptonarts.co.uk/ raise awareness of our recovery community, remove stigma for people affected by addiction,
highlight local creativity and provide diversity of voice, experience and knowledge.
SUIT’s long-standing friendship with this incredible charity started 10 years ago, when SUIT Project Manager Marcus Johnson, straight out of residential rehab, took part in a community project in Birmingham.
These collaborations have been funded by https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/ and Inclusive Communities Fund, whose mission is to:
Empower communities for positive change
Create a legacy for the West Midlands
Seek to address inequalities across the region
Bring people together
Improve health and wellbeing
Help our region to grow
Put the region on the map
Asylum Artist Quarter
Our work alongside the Asylum Artist Quarter’s #Roundabout public art space project, in Wolverhampton’s Chapel Ash subway, has seen our clients work alongside amazing creatives including light artist David Checkley, world-renowned AR artist Hayley Wall, Black Country steel sculptor Luke Perry, and eco-artist Billy Haynes. This Arts Council-funded project has been a yearlong gradual regeneration of a space that was inaccessible to people, considered unsafe, and a place where risk and drug use was prevalent. It is now a place of beauty.
Luke’s sculpture, co-created by SUIT volunteer Matt Lloyd and installed in the underpass alongside three other powerful works, provides a memorial to past addictions, the resilience of recovery, and the value of lived experience in our community. To see the community visiting the sculpture, reading the words, engaging with our stories, shows such significance and hope. The project came to an end in August, but it has left a legacy, and we are planning further work and exciting proposals between local artists, and SUIT clients and volunteers.
“Forest Faced” SUIT and Peter Chand, the Indian Storyteller,
at the Wolverhampton Literature Festival 2025
SUIT have been working with Peter Chand, The Indian Storyteller, and composer & editor PKC the First, to produce 6 short documentaries that record the lived experiences of SUIT clients & volunteers. The films have been co-designed by the SUIT cohort and describe the journey of addiction, recovery, and mental health, as navigating through a deep, dark forest.
The films were premiered at Wolverhampton Art Gallery as part of the 2025 Wolves Lit Fest, with a large, hugely supportive crowd, and included a ‘Zine workshop, panel discussion, and storytelling. The films will eventually be used as a creative resource for other clients in recovery, treatment services, agencies and staff to draw upon.
The “Forest Faced” has been kindly funded by Wolverhampton City Council’s Public Health.
Arena Theatre
In November 2024, SUIT’s creative arts team worked alongside the inspirational Neil Reading, Artistic Director of the Arena Theatre, and delivered an amazing forum theatre production created from our own lived experience of addiction and recovery.
"The Lack of Giving a S**t and How To Overcome It" took over the Arena Theatre and produced a powerful and thought-provoking evening, exposing the challenges in accessing support to help overcome addiction and to celebrate the creativity, resilience and heart of those in recovery.
If you came along, you'll know that the production explored the difficulties of addiction in a unique style of immersive theatre and ended by celebration the incredible achievements of people in recovery. Thanks to the crew at Detox Factor, Chase Recovery for their starring roles, and to everyone that supported the event.