What’s on in the region this week
While the weather is still warm, there’s lots to see and do this week.
HAKO
In front of Victoria University’s Library, Te Herenga Waka, Monday to Friday, 9am-8pm, free
Visual artist Dr William Franco in collaboration with BARTKRESA studio in Los Angeles is presenting HAKO, a global projection arts festival, a dynamic and playful experience of sight and sound.
Sing To Me, Taki Rua
Te Whaea Theatre, until Saturday, 7.30pm, $35-$45
Two worlds collide when mildmannered optometrist Ata and fierce sea maiden Whetu¯ fall in love. Set against the backdrop of a climate in crisis, Sing to Me is a powerful reimagining of pu¯ra¯kau, stories of old, in the 21st century.
Big Foot
Blue Flicker Productions, BATS Theatre, Tuesday to Saturday, 6.30pm, $15-$20
Combining poetry, physical theatre with comedy and original music, Big Foot will tug at your heartstrings and prove that even in the darkest of times no-one is ever alone. This show follows siblings Charlie and Eva as they learn to deal with the loss of someone close to them.
Love You: Public Policy for Intergenerational Wellbeing by Girol Karacaoglu
Lunchtime author talk, Unity Books, Wednesday, 12.30-1.15pm, free
How would we design, implement and evaluate public policy if it were based on our love for future generations? Unity Books and The Tuwhiri Project warmly invite you to hear Girol Karacaoglu in
Covid changes
With the move to Covid-19 alert level 2, please check the website and social media pages of events listed for any changes.
conversation with Ramsey Margolis on Karacaoglu’s new book, Love you: Public Policy for Intergenerational Wellbeing.
Stand Up Comedy – Alien Comedy Newtown
Moon Bar, 7pm, Thursday, and every first Thursday of the Month, $10 Alien Comedy is Newtown’s coolest and only monthly comedy show. It will be held on the first Thursday of every month and feature a lineup of entertaining comedians and pizza. Sculpture In Sound
Central Wellington (multiple sites), until May 30, 24 hours
Using a smartphone and any normal set of headphones, users can immerse themselves in a series of real-world soundscapes situated across the city. Download the Sculpture in Sound app from the
Apple App Store or Google Play Store, or visit the Sonicity website to find out more.
Exhibitions
Wild Domain: The Natural History of Jane Dodd Jewellery
The Dowse, 10am-5pm, Free, Bringing together more than 100 works by O¯ tepoti Dunedin-based contemporary jeweller Jane Dodd, this exhibition surveys over 30 years of her practice. Filled with a menagerie of creatures, landscapes and stories, the exhibition explores Dodd’s interest in highlighting humankind’s place in, and impact on, the environment and the evolutionary chain.
Zac Langdon-Pole: Containing Multitudes
City Gallery Wellington, until March 7, free entry
Zac Langdon-Pole’s disorienting, puzzling works prompt us to rethink our relationship to nature, colonial history, and more. Containing Multitudes – the first major New Zealand exhibition by the awardwinning Berlin-based expat – includes a new installation: a nativetimber floor where the tracks left by colonising borer beetles are perversely picked out in gold. More info at citygallery.org.nz
Portraits of Power / Portraits as Power.
New Zealand Portrait Gallery, until March 14.
Creating and disseminating a portrait has always been an act of power. This exhibition asks how portraits are utilised as tools of state and institutional power and how portraiture can be used in ways that undermine or subvert systems of power. www.nzportraitgallery.org.nz Exhibition: Melvin Day – Still Life: 1950s-2000s
Katherine Mansfield House & Garden, 25 Tinakori Rd, 10am-4pm Tuesday to Sunday, until March 21 An exhibition of works by Melvin Day CNZM from the collection of the Oroya & Melvin Day Charitable Trust. The proceeds from all artworks sold will contribute to funding grants to the New Zealand fine arts and heritage sectors. Reuben Paterson: Black Matter. The Dowse, until March 21.
The firework takes on new significance in this series of works by Auckland-based artist Reuben Paterson (Nga¯ti Rangitihi, Nga¯i
Tu¯ hoe, Tu¯ hourangi). dowse.org.nz
Events to include?
If you want your event listed on this page, please send an outline to arts@dompost.co.nz with ‘‘what’s on’’ in the subject line.
Through a combination of good policy, good policy changes and good luck, New Zealand has so far avoided the opioid crisis that has engulfed North America, a new study has found.
‘‘Widespread misuse or overdose appears largely moderate in New Zealand, and a major opioid crisis appears unlikely to unfold in the present scenario,’’ wrote the researchers, led by Benedikt Fischer of the University of Auckland.
But they warned that we cannot be complacent. The country was ‘‘rather unprepared’’ if opioid misuse rises significantly, they predicted.
The opioid crisis in the United States and Canada started in the 1990s when doctors increasingly prescribed drugs such as oxycodone (traded as OxyContin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), morphine, and methadone to patients for treatment of cancer, chronic pain, arthritis and other conditions.
These are highly addictive drugs and cause death. American drug overdose deaths were four times higher in 2018 than in 1999, and nearly 70 per cent of the 67,367 deaths in 2018 involved an opioid, reported the American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In the Canadian province of Ontario, 14 per cent of the population filled an opioid prescription in 2015-16.
These sorts of numbers forced authorities to crack down on legal use of these drugs. But often the addicted turned to the black market for heroin, fentanyl and various ‘‘home bake’’ concoctions. Deaths and treatment numbers spiked, as did imports of illicit drugs. Crime linked to opioid reliance also rose.
New Zealand, by contrast, presents a ‘‘distinctly different
picture’’, Fischer and colleagues wrote in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
Although the country’s opioid prescriptions rose from 2011-17, most of these were ‘‘weak opioids’’ that included codeines.
Many prescriptions were written for people older than 65, a group less prone to dangerous behaviour.
Moreover, there are indications that New Zealand’s opioid prescriptions were mostly given in hospitals, where doses and repeat prescriptions are easier to control.
In North America, by contrast, many prescriptions were made out in the community – GP offices and pain clinics – and were less controllable.
None of this suggests New Zealand doesn’t have large illicit drug problems, but Fischer and colleagues make clear that the situation could be much worse.
New Zealand authorities were also alert to the problems arising in Canada, the US and to a lesser extent Australia and Europe.
Education for doctors, including junior doctors, was implemented. ‘‘Active
interventions’’ were used to reduce or avoid strong opioid prescriptions.
Authorities targeted users who went ‘‘doctor shopping’’ for a steady supply of prescriptions, for example, and monitored doctors who may have been prescribing poorly.
And because New Zealand opioid prescriptions were generally moderate, cracking down didn’t create the sorts of ‘‘supply gaps’’ that were filled by the black market, the researchers found. In addition, heroin has been hard to buy here for many years.
New Zealand’s isolation and small population also helped, they suspect.
‘‘New Zealand may have, all along, engaged in the kind of restrained opioid utilisation practice, which most recent North American guidelines for chronic pain management have been advising and reactively seeking to achieve.’’
But it would be ‘‘prudent’’ for New Zealand to improve its resources for problematic drug use, lest the situation takes a turn for the worse.