Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic

Artistic expression has long been an effective vehicle to explore critical societal issues and engage communities. Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic aims to broaden awareness of the opioid epidemic and its ruinous effect, while offering messages of hope, resiliency, and recovery.

In the past decade, the opioid epidemic has swept across the United States, laying waste to inner cities, suburbs, and small towns. It is now the deadliest drug crisis in American history, with overdose fatalities the leading cause of death for adults under the age of fifty. New England is particularly hard hit, and efforts to raise awareness of both the problem and the interventions that can prevent overdoses from becoming fatal are especially important in this region.

Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic will bring together artists working in craft-based media with families that have been impacted by the crisis. Following an in-person meeting, the artists will create new works inspired by the conversation. Artists also will be provided substance use information by High Point Treatment Center to inform their process. This exhibition is of the final commissioned works.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.