Arts Preventing Overdoses in DTES

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is known across the country, and mostly for the wrong reasons.

Most people think of the DTES as one of the worst in the country in terms of crime, homelessness and the scale of misery that you see if you only look at the headlines. And that’s not a baseless perception – it is a bleak and troubled area populated by many people who live in a place which is unsafe to themselves and others.

But there is a side to the Downtown Eastside that not many people see. There is a community where people help each other and work collectively to solve problems that look unsolvable to most of us.

This story is about one of those positive solutions.

In an alley previously known as 'crack alley', artist from the downtown Eastside have transformed a bleak, dark and scary place into a mural project. The infamous alley is located between East Hastings Street and Cordova, right in the middle of the Downtown Eastside.

The initiative happened with the help of the Overdose Prevention Society. It started a GoFundMe page to help pay for the project. All the proceeds went to pay artist in the DTES to bring the alley back to life and help raise awareness around the drug crisis.

The mandate of the Overdose Prevention Society is, in their own words, is to “be leaders in the harm reduction movement with a continual push for change and justice .. we continue to challenge the normalization of the opiod crisis every day. We are a community driven grassroots initiative that brings people in from the alley and provides a safe and welcoming place to use drugs”

Meet Trey Helten, manager at OPS and Smokey Devil, a world renowned graffiti artist. He is a peer supervisor and volunteer coordinator at the Overdose Prevention Society.