Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

In November 2022, GM NHS Integrated Care launched the Greater Manchester Creative Health Strategy, detailing how GM plans to become the first city region in the world to realise the power of creativity, culture and heritage in addressing inequities and improving the health and well-being of its residents.
The GM Creative Health strategy sets out the importance of creative health in supporting GM to become a Marmot city region and in delivering against the recommendations of the Independent Inequalities Commission by enhancing well-being and equity; focusing on people and communities; and emphasising preventative approaches. The strategy highlights the role of creative health in delivering against NHSE’s priorities, including Core20PLUS5 and in delivering against the 2022 Greater Manchester Strategy, helping GM to become a greener, fairer and more prosperous city region.
Mirroring the broader GM approach to health, the GM Creative Health Strategy adopts a population health approach across the life course, setting out how creative health can support childhood development, prepare children for school, help us into work, improve our working lives, protect us from illness and assist in managing our long-term conditions. And as we age, how creative, cultural and heritage activities can keep us healthy, socially connected and living well at home.
The strategy also highlights where creative approaches can contribute to specific clinical pathways, for example, the contribution singing can make to overcoming breathlessness and anxiety in people with Long Covid; how dance can help to reduce falls and emergency hospital admissions and how engagement with creative activity can tackle at least half of the known risk factors for dementia.
A three-year Creative Health delivery plan (2023-26) is currently under development.

Art Therapy made by volunteers from ATE is a therapeutic framework and the methodology which is mainly used on art therapy theory, group analytic psychotherapy, dynamic psychotherapies and contemporary art theory. As a general rule, Art Therapy is indicated for people who, due to their circumstances or the disease they suffer, find it difficult to verbally articulate their conflicts and emotions. The initiative "The body in art therapy" is a creative action as a modulator of emotional activation in adults with severe intellectual disability (DIS). The activities included in this initiative are: design an MIAT based on the body's potential as the main avenue of creative expression for adults with DIS; explore how the dynamics of creative action work in modulating emotional activation during creative processes; and analyse the mechanisms of action, dynamics of intervention and factors at play with the development and application of MIAT.

YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity fighting for young people’s mental health. 64 Million Artists were invited to work with their network of Young Activists to help co-create the second phase of their Wise Up campaign which called on the Government to rebalance the education system to recognise that student well-being is as important as academic attainment. 64 Million Artists’ brief was to put the Young Activists’ creativity at the heart of the campaign, at the same time as helping them to develop their own creative skills and well-being. The Young Activists are aged between 14 and 25, come from across England, and have a wide range of lived experience of mental ill health.
From this group, it was an open call to join the Wise Up project. The organizers engaged 20 young people as active workshop participants in the co-design of the campaign – and many more as part of the wider project. Over 12 months, they worked with the group to build their creative confidence and develop campaign ideas. Through creative workshops and online participation, the group designed and delivered a range of outputs including: a live event creating an illustration of the perfect school’ inspired by hundreds of young people and members of the public; the concept and brief for a campaign film; and an interactive parliamentary event hosted by the Young Activists themselves in Westminster.

42nd Street is a mental health charity for young people. The Horsfall Centre is its creative programme, that enables them to expand the reach of 42nd Street and the impact of the work with young people, partner organisations, communities and supporters and make a positive impact on the mental health of young people and the wider population through engagement with arts, heritage and creativity. The organisation design and co-create the projects with young people to meet the diversity of their needs, issues and strengths. They engage with young people aged 11-25 years as participants and audiences, providing relevant, co-created opportunities for young people to work with high-quality artists to tell their stories, share their experiences and drive attitudinal, policy and practice change. They get referrals from a wide range of sources including directly from young people, parents, carers, GPs, schools and universities, social workers, and A & E. Once referred, the young people are offered a Service Assessment where they decide with the mental health practitioner what support they would like, including the Creative Programme, much like social prescribing. Young people can access The Horsfall at any stage of their journey with 42nd Street whether they are on a waiting list, receiving therapeutic support or have completed therapeutic support. They generally work in groups of 8-12 which fit comfortably in the gallery space. Groups can be made up of young people from 42nd Street or from groups in Greater Manchester who need support due to their lack of opportunity to engage in art based and mental health supported work.

Art brut, or Outsider art, is a term for works of art (especially fine art) created by people with mental disorders or who are otherwise socially marginalized. The awareness of art-brut as an artistic expression of people with mental handicaps and autism is still low in society. A systematic pedagogical approach of medical experts and lecturers to these artists, is very rare, if any. The main focus of this project lies in three areas:
1. Knowledge sharing among Czech, Slovak and Polish doctors and lecturers experienced in the work with artists with mental handicap and autism.
2. Mutual cooperation of healthy and handicapped artists.
3. Mapping of art-brut artists in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, promotion of their work among the public (international conference, exhibitions, art publications). Thanks to this project, the organizers will help with inclusion of handicapped artists and increase their social level in the society. The organization cooperates with similar organizations in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary and, in addition to the artistic field, also produces activities in the field of literature, film and music.

Gestalt theatre is an expressive and holistic approach to therapeutic and personal development work. It combines the principles of Gestalt therapy, dramatherapy, applied improvisation and live theatre. It leads to expanded awareness, deeper understanding of self and others, understanding of needs, working through emotions and inner and interpersonal conflicts. It uses theatre techniques (according to Konstantin Stanislavsky, Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner) as tools, especially improvisation and role-playing, music, movement or relaxation techniques.
- self-Experience and Growth Group (14 people and their year-long work, 12 meetings)
- workshops for the helping professions
- impro therapy
Improvisational theatre, or applied improvisation, is increasingly used in mental health care and psychotherapy. Pilot studies from the last ten years, mainly from the USA, Israel, Germany and other countries, have mapped the therapeutic potential of practicing improvisational skills, which are characterised by an emphasis on playfulness, collaboration, creativity, humour and spontaneity. Other studies highlight the fact that improv can also significantly develop therapists and other workers in the helping professions.

The original project goal to establish a collection of original art work of high quality for the hospital has been effectively pursued over time through various mechanisms – commissions, donations, purchases and the artist-in-residence schemes. The Trust has a policy of collecting works by people who are associated with the catchment area of the hospital. Other works are on loan from private collections. In addition to this, the Trust has hosted temporary exhibitions that show the work of local artists and artists’ groups as well as the work of staff, arts workers and artists-in-residence.
Project objectives:
- to enhance the hospital environment by reducing anxiety for service users and visitors and by introducing pleasant, less stressful working conditions for staff
- to enhance healing and demystify the arts by making the hospital a channel to improve access and participation in the arts and to provide a forum for fostering an awareness of the therapeutic value of the arts in a healing context
- to create bonds within the hospital community by bridging boundaries between professionals through involvement in arts activities
- to promote good practice by establishing links between practicing artists and art establishments that would encourage appreciation and inclusion of works of good standard
- to establish links between the hospital and the local and wider community
- to take the lead in establishing a project model in the Republic of Ireland for the benefit of arts and health organisations, including health boards, government departments and other hospitals.

Calypso Productions is a Dublin-based theatre company that aims to produce dynamic and distinctive productions challenging injustice and social exclusion in today’s rapidly changing world. Because of their commitment to arts for all, they also provide artistic programmes in both St. Brendan’s Hospital and in the Central Mental Hospital, which are aimed at breaking down the stigma and social exclusion experienced by people who suffer from mental disorders.

In this programme, two phases of which have taken place to date, participatory workshops and performances took place in six long-stay residential and day care centres in the Midland Health Board region. Each phase consisted of six weeks of activity in each participating centre. Phase one ran from April to June 2000, and phase two from October to December 2000. Two facilitators led each phase of the programme, each working with two other professional musicians in three venues. The aims were to provide older people accessing day-care or living in residential care environments with access to live music experiences, including performances and participative workshops and to measure the impact of these experiences within participating centres

The annual MinD workshop experiments with collaborative and participatory approaches through co-design activities. The projects that act on two aspects of design: on the one hand the project as a tool for transformation in an improving context, on the other the creative process as a system of relationships that translate into practices of social inclusion and rehabilitation. Through the direct participation of students and people followed by mental health services, MinD is the place to experiment and verify the clinical results of a design culture understood as a creative process. The participatory dimension of design makes it an effective tool for social inclusion, a generator of relationships aimed at enhancing the other, and a valuable ally of the rehabilitation strategy.
Since 2014, MinD has been holding its main workshop in Turin. Every year they are welcome:
- around 50 students from all over Italy, with a background in design-related fields and in human and social sciences (Design, Architecture, Psychology, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Techniques, Anthropology, Educational Sciences);
- people supported by Mental Health Services;
- healthcare professional;
- designers.