Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

The objective was to develop curricula for a study programme, which will train artists and health workers with an arts background to work with social inclusion in their artistic projects. The goal is to introduce them to art’s abilities to make connections, facilitate well-being, empowerment and strengthen self-confidence. Emphasises will be on training flexible and sensitive artists, capable of relating to advanced ideas and finding new roles in the constant changing society. The project consisted of several activities over a two-year period, offering a collaborative learning community for all art disciplines, with the active participation of academics and students in the field of arts and therapy, and healthcare specialists. Enhancement of personal skills, self-confidence, community engagement, collaboration skills and reflective practice was central elements of all activities. They were in the form of two intensive programmes and a staff development seminar, focusing on reaching out to people suffering the Alzheimer disease and youth at risk of dropping out of school.

The implementation of this project will contribute to eliminating the problems of marginalized groups (people with disabilities, seniors, migrants) and their social exclusion, and help them improve their key competences. These people, sometimes with problems of an emotional or psychological nature, often only by various art forms (music, art, dance, theatre) are able to open up. Art opens access to our interior: emotions, needs, fears. This is especially important in the times of the pandemic that all of Europe is currently struggling with. The pandemic seriously hindered this part of society both in terms of access to culture and art, as well as active participation in its creation. Counteracting the effects of these difficulties is therefore particularly important now. The project will train educators working with groups at risk of marginalization, so that they can show their students the way to active and creative participation in culture and art, and thus improve their position in society, including the labour market. The aim of the project is to develop cooperation and exchange of experiences of educators for the creative activity of the above-mentioned people at risk of exclusion, as well as to raise and expand the professional qualifications of people working with them; disseminating art therapy methods of work; increasing digital competences among staff working with people from communities at risk of marginalization and people working for the above-mentioned environments, as well as increasing the opportunities for individual development of educators and volunteers cooperating with partner organizations; obtaining new and improving the psychological, interpersonal and methodological skills necessary in working with people at risk of exclusion. The aforementioned groups will be participants of workshops and demonstrations of methods of work.

The Roda Gigante clown group does regular visits in hospitals, twice a week for 10 months a year, in an artistic intervention that promote the child's joy, autonomy and independence whilst humanizing the relationships between the artist and the patients. Lastly the activity of the group is all about make a relaxing environment and breaking protocols and hierarchies.

(Re)stop was a temporary action, carried out in 2019-2020 which entailed the humanization of health spaces through the articulation of different fields of art: literature, visual arts and architecture. The project also aimed to activate and transform one of the non-interactive collective spaces of the Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital of UFRJ (HUCFF-UFRJ), located in Cidade Universitária, Rio de Janeiro. The project sought, through a low-cost and short-term intervention, to impact the place in order to promote reflections on the role of art in the humanization of care, as a counterpoint to the speed and indifference of everyday life, awakening sensitivity and the personal engagement of students and health professionals who attend the site.

The Municipality of São Paulo, through the Municipal Department of Culture, announced a special program between August and September with various artistic interventions that reflected on Covid-19 pandemic that was affecting the country and the world. They are artistic interventions, some of a scenographic nature, designed to be appreciated by pedestrians, car passengers and public transport and residents of buildings in the surroundings where they were held. The idea was that the proposals work as instruments of sociocultural transformations that ensure the defense of the lives and memory of those who are gone, in addition to empathize with those who lost loved ones during the pandemic. These are projects that also operate as part of public health policies, as they open a dialogue about local, cultural and social contexts, with aesthetic and socially disruptive actions in the urban fabric of the city, making art and culture antidotes for the 21st century.

With the support of Instituto Usiminas, the units of Ipatinga and Itatiaiucu in Minas Gerais and Cubatao in Baixada Santista received local artists who interacted with teams of workers in order to reinforce, in a relaxed way, the messages of attention and care. In the interventions the artists addressed information about the importance of following the health guidelines, including the use of the mask, social distancing, restrictions on agglomerations, hygiene of hands and personal objects and respect for guidelines in restaurants.

The general objective of this learning mobility project was to encourage and contribute to resilience paths that involve young people and society, triggering, through art and theater, a collective process of reworking and re-appropriating the experience linked to Covid-19, both on an individual and community scale, placing at the center the experience of the most disadvantaged and least listened to, elderly and young people, and promoting the human value and the historical and popular memory heritage of the former and the resources, the potential, the spirit of initiative and the willingness to participate in the social life of the latter. 1. Theatrical workshop on the themes of encountering the other, knowing and listening to oneself and sharing emotions and images about confinement.
2. Recovery and enhancement of stories and testimonies of the territory, through a workshop of interviews and audio editing in which the voices of the inhabitants of the country will be recorded and then reworked into artistic products.
3. Art therapy laboratory
4. Manual workshop for the construction of masks
5. Yoga and meditation in nature
6. Non-formal education activities and games on the topics: multiculturalism and multilingualism, teamwork and cooperation, social roles and active citizenship.

MailArt4Seniors aims to create an innovative educational package that will give seniors the tools they need to fight isolation and ensure their personal well-being, maintain their social life and enjoy a quality daily living in the COVID-19 era. The tools will be set out as effective support for adult education trainers to plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate their training strategies in addressing the challenges seniors face in their daily life though the means of art. Mail art has been around for many decades. It’s not a particularly new idea, but in this time of people’s isolation due to the pandemic, it felt very important to revive it and utilize it as an artistic means of expression. Especially seniors who intensively experience social distancing, will be given the opportunity through mail art as a safe mode of communal creativity, to express and share - with their family members, friends and colleagues - feelings, thoughts, emotions, and ideas in an artistic, imaginative, motivating and most importantly safe, for their health, way since distance will be maintained, but loneliness and isolation will be fought.

Music Community is a project that explores possibilities of making a more efficient use of music in non formal education for young people, focusing on digitization as an essential trend and tool and on values such as social inclusion and environmental friendliness. The project also relies on the implication and modern vision of young people who are studying in the field of music and arts. As a response to the problem of the alienation of young people in these difficult times of the pandemic, the project consortium develop several instruments to be used in non-formal education. These instruments are: a collaborative platform for young people, an online manual for community based education on Music as a toll to overcome anxiety and an application for youth workers mixing music with other arts and a holistic artistic education MOOC. One of the objectives is to foster well-being through music among 80 beneficiaries of the project (participating in a blended mobility or in testing activities for the IOs), over the course of 24 months.

HEART is an Erasmus+ KA2 project to increase the quality of adult education and training by developing adult educators competences, awareness and knowledge linked to work engagement using a new training method - the synergy of outdoor experiential education and art methodologies- and by creating a more committed, engaging and professional environment inside their organisations. The burnout within helping professions – including educators – has been known since decades, and by now a solid research and practical intervention basis exists linked to it. However, burnout continues to be a severe issue until today. Educators, their organisations and managers lack knowledge and awareness of the burnout syndrome and its potential prevention techniques. Timely interventions are essential to prevent burnout, otherwise its later stages would involve physical, emotional and mental exhaustion from which it is difficult to recover. To tackle above issues, a transnational partnership composed of 6 partners from 5 countries developed the HEART project. HEART innovative methodology is based on transnational, holistic and positive approach and creates a synergy between outdoor experiential education and artistic methods.