A U.S. Department of Agriculture 2022 report found that 44.2 million people lived in households that had difficulty getting enough food to feed everyone, up from 33.8 million people the year prior. Those families include more than 13 million children experiencing food insecurity, a jump of nearly 45 percent from 2021.

Life in the last 5 years has been challenging for a lot of people. With the seemingly endless rise in costs for basic necessities, getting through each day has become a more stressful endeavor. This generation has faced multiple recessions, a global pandemic, increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, skyrocketing food and housing prices, unaffordable medical care, and the stress of global violence. Surviving, the ability to continue living and existing, takes a deep psychological toll. Ensuring the bare minimum of food to eat, somewhere to call home, and the most basic health care, has become more and more difficult.

Taber Art Gallery, in partnership with the Thrive Center, at Holyoke Community College is seeking submissions for THRIVE: Beyond Surviving on view October 31 – December 20, 2024. Artists are encouraged to enter work that considers the systemic, communal, and/or individual obstacles and barriers to survival, what surviving means, how we as humans can continue to dream, push, and hope for more than the minimum, and the struggle of exhaustion vs. the ability to rest.