Enter the House of Horrors and transform fear into growth…

Horror as a genre, has always given shape to what we fear, survive, and transcend. In this two-part event, writer, and researcher Alex Herod joins artist George Grace Gibson to explore how horror can become a creative language for recovery: a way to meet difficult experiences, reimagine the self and create new forms from the things that haunt us.

Expect an afternoon of conversation, making and shared enquiry, moving between research, lived experience and hands-on creative practice. Together, we ask what horror can teach us about survival, imagination, and the peculiar work of becoming whole.

Part One: Making Friends with Your Monsters
1pm-1.45pm

Drawing on her research paper,  Survival and Recovery: Addiction and the Therapeutic Potential of Horror Writing,  Alex Herod will explore how horror can offer a visceral space for meeting difficulty, digging into darkness, making friends with our monsters and surviving.

Bringing together lived experience, creative practice and research into forms of genre based self-therapy, Alex asks how horror might support recovery processes.

Part Two: Recoverist House of Horrors
2 – 4 pm

Step inside the Recoverist House of Horrors: a creative workshop led by artist George Grace Gibson, where you will make your very own sculptural, horror house-shaped artist book.

Inspired by Alex Herod’s research, this workshop will explore themes of recovery, self-care, survival, and transformation, by reimagining the house: a place of shelter, memory, haunting, and possibility. Working with book making techniques you will reimagine the house as a container of stories, fragmented memories, and future possibilities that unexpectedly unfold.

Places for this workshop are limited, so advance booking is recommended. Come ready to listen, share and learn by entering our collective Recoverist House of Horror.