Creating Rituals for International Overdose Awareness Day

International Overdose Awareness Day (IOAD) is a global event held on 31 August each year to raise awareness of overdose and reduce the stigma of drug-related death. It acknowledges the grief felt by families and friends remembering those who have died or had a permanent injury as a result of drug overdose.

Thousands of people die each year from drug overdose, they come from all walks of life. International Overdose Awareness Day spreads the message that the tragedy of overdose death is preventable.

For IOAD 2022, we worked with small performance adventures and participants from Greater Manchester in a series of performance and creative writing workshops, to contribute to a UK wide artwork. Ideas from these workshops have become part of a collective poem, created by individuals and organisations from across the UK, united by lived experience of overdose in their communities.

Collective Ritual Poem was created by small performance adventures in collaboration with arts organisations across the country, including: The Men's Room and TiPP (Manchester), Theatre Royal (Plymouth), Fallen Angels (Chester) and Bristol Drugs Project and Bristol Theatre Royal, Outsiders Project (Bournemouth) and Outside Edge (London).