RIOT will be broadcasting live from The Recovery Festival 2013, at the QEII Conference Centre, Westminster. The festival will take place on 12th - 13th March, with RIOT bringing you interviews with key speakers and exhibitors, providing a real time overview of the festival.

The underlying purpose of the Recovery Festival is to build bridges between the business and recovery communities; to engage, inform and seek ways to work together. The Recovery Festival will create an environment in which employers can:

- Challenge the assumptions they may have about addiction

- Experience first-hand the talent and ambition of those in recovery

- Understand how they can help unlock talent and ambition for mutual benefit

The Recovery Festival will deliver this through a wide range of speakers, workshops, panel discussions and exhibitions from across both the recovery and business sector. This will include businesses who understand the talent and ambition and, as a result, are benefiting from employing people in recovery.

For more information on the festival please visit www.recoveryfestival.org.uk

This week will see the launch of a brand new Radio Station based in the heart of Burton. To be launched on the 31st January by Esther McVey, MP and former GMTV presenter, the station will help communicate a clear message about the talent and skills available from the recovery community.

RIOT Radio will be podcasting live via the internet from riotradio.co.uk, with a view to becoming a fully fledged FM community station when applications open in June. The organisation behind the launch is RIOT Recovery Champions, a service user forum with charitable objectives run and maintained by service users. Founded in 2009, its goals are to provide a support service for service users going into treatment or who are in recovery with a view to promoting abstinence at all levels through our Recovery Champions model.

James McDermott, founder of RIOT remarked “RIOT Radio is the next step for RIOT, we aim to break stigma and show the community what can be achieved by those in recovery”

The station itself will be run by RIOT service users, with the intention of gaining not only further skills and experience within the broadcasting world but also a variety of qualifications.

Amy Stretton, Station Manager commented “RIOT Radio is giving society a chance to see who we really are, ordinary people with a drive to succeed in our lives. All the volunteers here are committed to making the station a success. The station will provide a wide variety of music, news, interviews and hopes to be a real asset to the community.”

RIOT Radio is currently working closely with both Derby & Burton Colleges to help provide a platform for the further education for the station volunteers, as well as being an informative source for the community.