[Music] the UNH house exibit has two main sections to it one by Leah dbuk she is a photographer from Canada since she was 15 she began meeting people all over the world who are experiencing homelessness taking their photos and also listening to their stories and so we have their stories and their photographs on one wall it seems like they tell the whole story just by looking into the eyes of the subjects in these portraits but in conducting these interviews we get a really wide ranging look at some of the many many reasons why people might be experiencing homelessness sometimes people are optimistic sometimes they're not sometimes they are really thankful that someone is just willing to sit and talk to them and listen to their story on the other wall of the exhibit we have signs by baronette he has taken these signs from all over the country Willie for the past 31 years has been buying signs from people who are experiencing homelessness and he's been creating these large scale installation pieces that are kind of a collage some of them are humorous some of them are very sad some of them are profound all different kinds of signs people asking not only for money not only for resources but they're also asking for compassion and for a smile and for you know the human touch he was really uncomfortable himself with making eye contact and stopping and talking to somebody who is experiencing homelessness that awkwardness somehow found a way to manifest as the form of this project taking a close look at each one of these signs is sort of a way of seeing that I think a lot of people maybe are used to avoiding and in between the two exhibits we have a lot of data on the number of unhoused people in Phil Philadelphia and in the country and some of the risk factors for being unhoused and some of the public health risk factors that affect people who are unhoused this is information shining some light on the trends and the statistics telling the story of homelessness as a Public Health crisis those are numbers and they're really important and in some ways they really grab your attention my role was to gather the evidence here in Philadelphia nationally to do it in a way that was what we call adjusted or accounts for differences between Philadelphia and other parts of the country and also to make sure that we're using the right numbers that reflected what is going on here in Philadelphia with the number of people who are unhoused this exhibition unhoused is the second time that these two artists have worked together this was an opportunity for them to get to know each other better as artists and understand one another's artistic practices a bit better and also I think this was the first time that they have really exhibited their work within the context of more of an interpretive exhibition an exhibition that has a point of view when this project was first proposed we talked to the artist and we talked about and what they wanted to get out of it we wanted to bring attention to the problem and we wanted to show that there is a person behind every photograph behind every sign and also from the public health side there is a person behind every statistic the process of working with the two artists in some ways was very similar and in some ways really different you know in Willie's case his installations are spontaneous you know I'm Furnishing him with all the drawings of the space and he knows every dimension of the walls and all the materials but I think it's not until he's standing in front of that wall that the composition really starts to take shape so it was really special to watch him work cuz he worked pretty solemnly and pretty independently Leah has been used to displaying work in a more straightforward Gallery style approach and we had an idea you know have you thought about doing something maybe like Salon style and she was willing to give that a shot we worked with a fantastic exhibition design firm called gecko group and they helped us with some of the designs and the arrangements and production for Leah's wall as well as some of the graphics in the space Leah and I were up on the ladder for a few days there it was 40 portraits that were being installed and they're all about an inch and a half apart so it was a lot of precision it was a lot of adjustment a lot of Readjustment and attention to detail I think Leah has photographed over 600 people as part of this project even asking her to narrow that down to 40 I think is quite a challenge I know it's a lot of hard work on her part but it was a team effort that really came together that I'm really proud of so we often think of people who are on housed as a public health problem when in fact they are at risk for public health problems themselves and it is a refle of larger societal issues homelessness is not a problem that somebody is born with as with a genetic condition it is not something that is communicable from person to person many of the people who find themselves on housed would not find themselves in that situation if there were the proper safety nets to prevent that from happening in 2023 there was a 12% increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness and that is the largest jump according to the federal government's numbers since they started keeping track of those numbers in Philadelphia we have about 5 th000 of our friends and neighbors living in an unhoused situation it doesn't matter the location in Philadelphia there are people all over the city and outside the city as well it was very interesting to see that the official counts don't have children as being unsheltered they may be on house but they are considered to be sheltered because they're staying in a shelter or they're staying in some sort of housing situation but at the same time many of the people who are unsheltered they have some sort of medical condition that needs attention and they find themselves limited from receiving those attentions because of their situation both financially and a societal level if you're experiencing homelessness it's much harder for you to find a doctor and see a doctor regularly if you have any mental health issues it's going to be exacerbated same with substance use disorder and if you haven't had either one of those issues historically you know the stress the anxiety really takes a toll on your [Music] health the mum does all kinds of exhibitions and most of them are focused on our collection it's a historical collection that is mostly 19th century and this is a contemporary topic the college is interested in its exhibitions and its programs being a springboard into larger conversations about contemporary subjects in health and medicine that are important to our visitors to the city and to medicine and health in general this public health lens that we're viewing this issue through is in some ways why the college exists in the first place to lessen human misery that is I think in the original charter for the college the College of Physicians way back in the late 1700s came together to help the people of Philadelphia with a disease called yellow fever this disease that was infectious in nature but it was the structural and societal components that made it even worse and so they got together to do something about it establishing a Board of Health talking about mosquito control Etc that has been the mission of the college since the late 1700s we continue that mission now making people aware of this other issue that again it is not infectious in nature but it is affecting a significant proportion of the population and that proportion of the population that is on house finds themselves harboring both a chronic and infectious diseases at a much higher level than the rest of us they are at higher risk of that you know the big idea is that not having a place to sleep at night not having a roof over your head that is a serious health hazard people experiencing homelessness deserve dignity and they deserve our respect and they deserve empathy we want to make sure that people know that this is happening and that you know we are all one or two or three pay tricks away from not being in a situation where we can afford housing and so we would like people to reach out to the organizations that we partner with to offer volunteer services or resources or donations to them this is often an unseen population the sooner more people can see them and listen to them and hopefully empathize with them the closer we can get to achieving some of the public health policy goals that we talk about in the [Music] exhibition in the gallery we have TalkBack walls and we're asking our visitors very direct questions about you know what does home mean to you what could you do to help people who are experiencing homelessness have you ever experienced homelessness yourself and we look at some of those messages and they were very positive they were very encouraging and they offered a lot of good insight into how the exhibit impacted them after learning some of these Trends and statistics and opening your eyes to Willie and Leah's work this exhibition space will be an opportunity for people to really think deeply about those questions and they can respond right there on the wall and read what other people have to say as well that was very nice to see how people opened up to the idea that through ART they can be made aware of such a big problem as long as it opens people's eyes to that idea that these are individuals who deserve our respect and our empathy and that it's not their fault that they're experiencing homelessness you know the first step in helping people is just recognizing them and seeing I hope that's something the visitors can take away from this [Music]