If You Could Speak to the World combines seven spoken poetry works with music performed by Milnrow Band along routes from Oldham town centre into Northern Roots.
The self-guided audio trail has been commissioned by visual arts organisation Portraits of Recovery for Recoverist Month.
It will also coincide with the opening of Northern Roots, a community hub and visitor destination on 160 acres of urban greenspace, on Saturday 19 September.
Poet Phil Davenport worked with around 15 people aged from their 20s to their 70s who have lived experience of substance use and recovery.
Participants were from Turning Point's Rochdale and Oldham Active Recovery service, known as ROAR, with support from the Northern Roots Natural Health Service.
The group met outdoors at Northern Roots during the spring and early summer. They worked on poetry and sound recordings and helped map the route and choose stopping points.
Davenport mixed the recordings with parts of brass compositions written by sound designer and composer Sophie Cooper and performed by Milnrow Band.
Locations on the trail include Alexandra Park boating lake, the beehives at Brook Mills Gardens, the Tip Road path and Park Bridge.
The shortest route is two miles and covers all seven locations, while longer routes of up to six miles will also be available.
Maps will be available from the new Northern Roots Welcome Building and online from September.
Zac Blinston, a recovery community development worker at ROAR who has lived experience of recovery from substance use, said: “I think this is a really important project for the town.
“Oldham has such a rich history and is a larger-than-life place, despite being one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. This audio trail is breaking down barriers and showing that poetry is for everyone - it's only words after all!
“The trail is both a physical journey and a figurative one. I hope that people who follow it feel a sense of hope. We're all on a journey - it's just that some people's journeys are harder than others.”
Davenport said: “This is a sound walk like no other. We aren’t delivering a nature trail or a local history, but something much more unusual. We will be guided by the voices of Oldham and Rochdale people in recovery: people who are intensely aware of the dark art of damage and the honesty needed to pull away from it.
“Their poems are the narrative for the walk, which takes us out of a busy, chaotic town centre, to the edge of where people are and then out beyond, into the woods and the wilds.”
The project was funded by Transport for Greater Manchester's Wheels and Walks programme and forms part of Recoverist Month and Oldham's Greater Manchester Town of Culture Rising Up programme.
A series of free guided walks will take place during September and October to launch the permanent audio trail.
