Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Aria - Architettura e Riabilitazione was born from the need to rethink the spaces of mental fragility (psychiatric residences, hospitals, semi-residential structure of mental health services), mostly conceived as places of marginality and isolation rather than spaces of rehabilitation and inclusion.
The project goals are:
- Humanization of mental health care settings;
- Intersectoral synergies between project culture and health (project scalability and new market opportunities);
- Networking, knowledge transfer;
- Bringing about cultural change (stigma reduction, social inclusion and re-employment).

Hear Me is an urban rehabilitation project started in 2020 and carried out in collaboration with PUSH, Fondazione per l'Architettura/Torino, and Circoscrizione 3. The project focuses on the creation of micro spaces of well-being within the underdeveloped green public area of 'Giardino Piredda' in Turin. Active listening is used as a tool for social inclusion that allows the activation of co-created practices that connect citizens, people supported by mental health services, design students, psychologists, and designers.
Hear Me is a multidisciplinary project composed of different activities spread out over a time span of 2 years; Co-creation workshops, urban explorations, and design sprints guided the participants through an in-depth analysis of the area, the needs of its users, and the shared vision for its future. Together they envisioned, designed, and built prototypes of urban furniture that could make the place more accessible, enjoyable, and attractive.
The participants developed the idea of using a module of 1 square meter to invite people to imagine a future for the area starting from a very tiny portion of it. This exercise helped each participant to confront his/her ideas with a manageable dimension in which allocate functions and objects aimed at fostering positive interaction in public space, reducing the stigma over mental fragility.
The project today presents 2 prototypes of the co-designed urban furniture that are actively maintained and taken care from the residents of the neighborhood. The next step will be the development of a stable partnership with the Municipality for the continuation of the transformative process happening in the area.

Luoghi Comuni is based on the recognition of the effectiveness of cultural and creative activities as a factor in promoting individual and collective well-being. Luoghi Comuni enables a group of people to enjoy cultural opportunities and actively contribute on the accessibility of these spaces, benefiting the cultural organizations involved and the whole community. The goal of the project is to facilitate the identification of kind places that enable and generate well-being in collaboration with citizens with divers fragilities but also to collaborate with cultural organizations for improving their services.

The City of Turku’s MyLibrary Project started with a project in Spring 2018 that found ways to bring culture and leisure services home to those who had difficulty in getting out to those services because of their advanced age, illness or disability. The principal target group were older people living at home and in nursing homes. The outcome of this project was a service offered by the Recreation Division in the City of Turku that allows residents to enjoy culture even when access to services is difficult. The service is free of charge for maximum accessibility. The digital services of the Recreation Division have been brought together on an accessible website (omakirjasto.fi). Some third-party services of high quality and free of charge are also included. The aim was to make the website as clear, easy to use and attractive as possible. MyLibrary provides access to
the selected services even for clients who have no previous experience of Internet use. The service can also accommodate a client’s possibly diminished ability to use the service due to a memory disorder or decline in motor functions, etc. Navigating the site has been made as easy as possible. Many clients have a hard time finding interesting and high-quality content online, so the selection in this service is deliberately limited on the principle of ‘less is more’. Having a clearly defined selection also makes it easy for staff in nursing homes to find digital cultural content. The website allows access for instance to audio books, e-books, concerts of the Turku Philharmonic, photograph collections of the Turku Museum Centre and exercise activities.

It is important for museums to devise a wide range of accessible services. In recent years, particular attention has been paid to services for people who are unable to visit museums themselves. In the city of Tampere, this includes ‘sound museums’ for lending out. For older people in nursing homes, and particularly those with memory disorders, it is important to be able to recall past events from their lives with others. Recalling the past exercises the mind and the memory and helps reflect on a person’s life journey up to the present day. Sharing memories boosts self-esteem and fosters a sense of safety and bonding. Every one of us sometimes recalls something we have not thought about for decades. How did that suddenly come into my mind? Old objects, sounds and artworks are excellent tools for unearthing memories of the distant past. In Tampere, concepts called ‘sound museums’ and ‘museum packages’ have been developed, along with a free lending service. Staff at nursing homes or day centres can check out material from the Cultural Education Unit TAITE for a period of about two weeks. There are three sound museums that contain digital audio and video recordings: sounds of people working, of animals and of nature; music; voice clips by famous Finnish radio hosts and actors; and sounds of mechanical household devices and tools. Some are historical sounds that can rarely be heard in everyday life today, if at all. In addition to the sound museums, which travel in briefcases, there are ten museum packages containing objects and photographs offering inspiration for reflection and exploring various themes in art and cultural history. The museum packages draw on the handling collection of Tampere Museums, which consists of items that can be freely handled and examined, and also contain plenty of photos and documents from the archives in digital form.

Espoo Hospital specialises in care for the elderly and in rehabilitation. It also provides support services for older people living at home. The hospital has 247 beds and employs more than 400 nursing and rehabilitation professionals, including one music therapist. Espoo Hospital also has a home hospital, a geriatrics outpatient clinic and a palliative care outpatient clinic. The health care and rehabilitation services provided by the hospital under primary health care are mainly intended for older people. Espoo Hospital has made a commitment to investing in art and culture, as this is seen as conducive to patient recovery, amongst other things. For instance, an extensive collection of artworks from EMMA, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, are on display in the public premises and on the wards. In 2018, Espoo Hospital ran a project entitled ‘Art supporting recovery’, involving a lot of performers, music and dancing. Music therapy was given on the hospice ward to comfort family members, and an informal carers’ art group opened up new perspectives on their work as a morale booster. In 2020, Espoo Hospital received support for promoting art, culture and wellbeing from the City of Espoo’s well-being programme. The purpose of this project was to outline specific processes for the various wards, so that patients and employees would get used to regular activities and feel comfortable about participating in arts sessions. Artists with considerable experience in combining art and wellbeing were involved in the project. This eventually focused on one previously tried and tested activity and two pilot concepts: 1) the songdrawing method for psycho-geriatric and neurological patients; 2) a pilot of Music for Life by hospital musicians for patients on the infectious diseases ward and 3) a pilot of hospital clowns visiting adult patients on the wound care ward and the neurology ward.

Service centres can be found across the city, and the services they offer are principally free of charge. In 2019, about 13,500 Helsinki residents had a service centre card making
them eligible for the services offered. Clients come to the service centres independently or with a friend or family member. Some clients are referred to the service centres by partners such as health centres, home care or hospitals. Clients are free to come and go, to join groups and participate or not, as they choose. Many clients have come to regard the service centre as an extension of their homes, a meaningful community that they enjoy for many years. Within the service centre, clients can – according to changes in their functional capacity or life situation – move from one leisure activity group to another, perhaps to a peer support group for clients requiring more assistance
The service centres cater to the needs of a diverse clientele spanning a wide age range with both individual and collective cultural experiences, designed to provide special moments or to give an additional boost to everyday routines. Clients may attend talks, concerts, daytime dances and singalong events. There is also a wide range of hobby and study groups available, in areas as diverse as watercolour painting, ceramics, sewing, woodwork, metalwork, drama, etc. The service centres also offer cultural experiences for those who could not independently access them or who would not otherwise go. Arts-based and activity-based methods allow clients to enjoy their cultural rights even with diminished functional capacity due to a memory disorder or severe mobility or communication impairments

The Accessible Orchestras project coordinated in Finland by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in collaboration with the Association of Finnish Symphony Orchestras aims to
develop the work of orchestras with older people in Finland and Great Britain. In the UK, the project is coordinated by Orchestras Live in collaboration with the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland. The two-year project supports equal accessibility to culture and the arts by seeking ways of bringing orchestra activities closer to those among the older population who are unable to attend concerts in person. The aim is to promote a sense of community and the active inclusion of older people through art. In addition to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, other Finnish orchestras participating in the Accessible Orchestras project include the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta ‒ the orchestra of the City of Espoo, and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. The producers of these orchestras have convened during the 2020–21 season to pilot new ideas and share ideas with each other. Participating orchestras in the Accessible Orchestras project from the UK include the City of London Sinfonia and Manchester Camerata.

The Finnish National Theatre set up its Touring Stage in 2010. Its mission is to take performances and workshops to locations where people cannot otherwise easily access
live art. The Touring Stage performances and workshops can be booked for service centres for the elderly, in residential units for people with learning disabilities or people
recovering from mental illness or addiction; in hospitals; in prisons; or at immigration reception centres. It also produces documentary theatre projects, created in collaboration with marginalised communities. The Touring Stage aims to reinforce the relationship between the National Theatre and society at large, and with specific communities.

The work is rooted in the arts-based method developed over many years by the Maria Baric Company, using the visual nature of puppetry and the brain-activating properties of music. The purpose of this approach is to improve the well-being of older people who have memory disorders or are otherwise ill or functionally impaired through enhancing their agency, improving their quality of life and contributing to their social well-being. This model has been honed with nursing homes and hospital wards in various cities over a period of ten years, with financial support provided from, for example, the City of Helsinki, Arts Promotion Centre Taike, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Stea.