Using lived experience to strengthen addiction recovery in the community

This story refers to a Star People award. The Star People programme supported hundreds of Big Local residents in trying out, developing, or growing an entrepreneurial solution to a social issue in their Big Local area. It was delivered by UnLtd – a charitable foundation that funds and supports social entrepreneurs – and jointly funded by Local Trust. 

When I speak to Sam Delaney, he’s trying to find a quiet place to sit inside a bustling community café. He’s in the middle of filming for a project called Recovery Town, aiming to demonstrate how addiction can affect anyone and where they can access support. 

This is just one of the many projects run by Creative Start CIC, a recovery and arts organisation set up by Sam in 2012. 

After leaving a recruitment job in Liverpool, Sam spent several years volunteering independently in Wigan, before moving to North East Lincolnshire just over 13 years ago to pursue his ambition of helping people in addiction recovery. ​“I wanted to change recovery, and there wasn’t a lot of [it] going on when I first came here. 

“My missus was pregnant, and it was getting difficult because I volunteered for a long time. I wasn’t earning any money.” 

As someone with lived experience of addiction, it was at this time in Sam’s own recovery journey that he received life-changing support through a Star People award – offered through Big Local North Cleethorpes and delivered by charitable foundation, UnLtd. 

“I speak very highly of that support. It was so hands-on at that time and so critical for me,” Sam recalls. ​“I was going to get a job down south, you know, I was going to give up. 

“I went down to London and had a meeting with them, and they gave me an award. They paid my salary for a year. I mean, that was the reason I could carry on.” 

Supported by UnLtd, Sam worked with volunteers from the community to restore an old building on the docks, which would become the home of Creative Start. 

“We came down and restored this building, with only some professional help for specialist jobs. But getting started and still to this day, it was just volunteers that wanted to be part of something. That’s the legacy for me.”

Speaking about his own recovery experience, Sam has developed a bank of tools along the way to help him stay on track. It’s this lived experience that enables him to support others in the Grimsby area. ​“I’m quite a rare person. There’s not many people that get to 20 years of sobriety. You have to be able to know how to navigate it, and you have to have people that you can trust and rely on. 

“Although it doesn’t define me, recovery, like it doesn’t define who I am – I’m a dad, I am a director of a charity – it’s still always there. And I have to admit, I say to myself, ​‘I haven’t got a drinking problem anymore. I have a thinking problem.’ So I have to be very self-aware. 

“I needed to do something that gave me the freedom, in order to stay well. If I’d have stayed in a normal job or a job that I’d been doing before, I would be drinking again. I’ve no doubt about it. 

“They say in recovery, you have to change one thing – everything. That’s what I did. I changed everything.” 

Local people are most likely to be aware of Creative Start through their art murals – of which, Sam tells me, they’ve now created 40! 

However, the murals are really a way to open the door, offering a distraction to those trying to get better, helping break the external stigma. ​“We’re not doing it to show off. We’re not doing it because we’re in competition in an arts way. We’re doing it to prove what’s possible and provide evidence in the community of what somebody or a group of people can do when they get well.” 

“We’re an arts organisation, and the art is brilliant, it does put you on the map and it does get you recognised. But that’s not why we do it… It’s deeper than that for us and it’s that what drives us. That’s what lived experience does. The bottom line is, it’s a lived experience recovery organisation. 

“I was driven by my recovery, completely driven by my life and what happened to me, and the desire to help others that have gone through something similar. 

“I only used art because it helped my head. It helped to take me out of myself and stop me thinking. Stop me thinking about all the shame and guilt, and all the things that happen to somebody when they’re in active addiction and when they come out of it. 

“We do everything we do to show that people can recover from addiction, and then also go on to do great things. And that’s how we break the stigma. 

“What we’re trying to do is normalise it, so recovery is more accessible to everybody.” 

At the heart of Sam and the team’s work at Creative Start are volunteers. 

“When we go and paint the murals, there’s usually 15 of us volunteering. And it’s a real mixture of people. We have artists that come and choose to work with us because they like the environment. 

“Then I think we’ve got four full-time staff and then two part-time staff. So, we haven’t got a massive team, but our impact is huge. When you look at how much work, how much output we have, that comes down to our volunteers. It’s at the core of everything we do. It’s the backbone of it all. 

“I left a secure job to choose to do the work … I think I wasn’t earning any money for something like seven to eight years. I made a sacrifice so other people don’t have to. Now we do it in stages. So, if people come, first they will be members, and then once they’re ready they can become a volunteer. And then we look at what it is they want to do. Do they want to get a job? Do they want to set up their own project? It’s all about finding what an individual wants to do. 

“And they’ve got the passion, which you can’t fight, which scares people sometimes. Other people don’t understand it, but it’s so important. We want people to have purpose. We’re not rushing them back to work, we want them to build true, genuine purpose.” 

When speaking about key milestones and achievements throughout Creative Start’s journey, Sam shared, ​“We’re respected now by a local authority. Lived experience is respected more than it was. It was always kind of treated as a little bit less than, in a way. 

“We won the Investors in People Award this year [2025], which is a prestigious award in London. We also won the BBC Humberside Community Award. So yeah, we’ve won a number of awards over the years. Not that we do it for that, but it’s nice to be recognised. 

“But the key thing is we’ve moved recovery on. We’re starting to normalise it. We’re starting to get people come in that wouldn’t have come in 10 years ago. 

“We’ve got one of the best infrastructures now – recovery of lived experience infrastructures – in the country… If anything, people are spoiled. There’s never been a better time to get well.”