Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Gigging-4-Living is working to support performing artists – musicians, dancers, and actors – to develop their business skills so that they can build successful and sustainable careers in the creative sector – making use of the multitude of digital platforms that can support their career in a post-pandemic economy. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, performing artists have been negatively and disproportionately impacted by the lockdowns and restrictions across Europe. Unable to perform, and to make a living, this has negatively impacted their mental health and wellbeing. As such, Gigging-4-Living also supports performing artists to protect and maintain their sense of well-being in a post-pandemic economy. Gigging-4-Living partners will develop a suite of unique resources dedicated to supporting performing artists to innovate and transform their art form into a model that can survive in a pandemic disturbed society while simultaneously building the resilience to the threat of mental health stressors. GIGGING-4-Living will provide a toolkit of resources that focuses on building resilience to promote positive mental health within the performing arts sector. The 4 modules will address issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness and self-confidence.

The general aim of the project “SPARKS for special needs” is to facilitate a cross-cultural research and exchange about self-directed learning in the specific frame of special needs. We intend to involve in this process disabled adults and families, as well as professionals, therapists and educators in the field of care. The main focus is on Somatic Education – especially Body-Mind Centering (BMC) - as an innovative approach to bodily self-awareness and community-based learning, which provides educational resources for enhancing and empowering the experiential knowledge of individuals and communities. In this project, BMC functions as a model and vector for the formal/informal production of knowledge that draw from traditional therapies, neuroscience, developmental psychology and clinical research, as well as body-based practices, dance, performing arts and other creative processes.

The project involves assistance within the Disability Services, including services which are educational, therapeutic and recreational. These services are offered to persons with a disability, both physical and intellectual, through the programmes. The services include: pottery sessions, therapeutic horse riding, arts and crafts, multi sensory therapy, human animal interaction, swimming sessions and animal park visits. It involves assisting Inspire staff in disability programmes throughout the organisation. The project was originally designed to help us to provide free services to children with disabilities. This service has continued, requiring committed and regular volunteers who can support our staff to continue to provide such services. It has also expanded to assisting in other programmes which require volunteer assistance, and we have found the best way to provide committed assistance is through a mixture of local volunteers and more regular volunteers from the European Voluntary Service. The objectives of the project are to continue to meet the demands within the community, create a learning opportunity for young persons and to increase the the volunteers' employability and to promote healthy lifestyle and the inclusion of persons with disabilities within society.

The main objectives of the project are to develop educational tools and activities aimed at promoting the wellbeing of people with dementia and their family and professional carers through art and museum programmes. The idea behind MA&A is that art, considered as a complex cultural and relational experience, and the museum, conceived as an inclusive space for informal learning, can help to develop new strategies and ways of communication and relationship with people with dementia. The goal is to bridge the world of museums and art and the social and health sector: with this integrated perspective, museum activities can help create a dementia-friendly society. Through online resources for training of museum educators and geriatric professionals, in-person training events, exchange of experiences, sharing of reflections, guidelines and training materials, MA&A offers a significant contribution to the dissemination of quality museum projects accessible to people with dementia and their carers.

The course takes a multidisciplinary approach to art and art psychology, introducing participants to different ways of understanding and teaching arts, dealing with the students’ creative process and taking the best of the positive impact of art-related activities on our wellbeing. It is based on a broad understanding of art and creativity across the lifespan and will draw on work in several disciplinary areas such as neuropsychology, pedagogy and sociology, to consider creativity at different ages and in different contexts and specifically to consider the artistic phenomenon as a combination of perspectives and situations (artist, viewer, artwork). This course also allowed the school to discover the positive impact of art related activities on our emotional well being and help engage their pupils in the psychology of art and its therapeutic qualities.

International partners from seven countries had worked on this project for over three years to increase the use of the arts in the treatment of long-term conditions. The TABLO project brought together representatives from seven countries to develop an e-learning toolkit of vocational training which will help integrate arts into every day physical and mental healthcare when working with people who have long term conditions. Recognising that there is much research and evidence that supports the use of the arts having a profoundly positive effect on peoples mental and physical health and wellbeing, this project aimed to educate and share ideas that would enable professionals, carers and others, to use arts as part of the support they provide to individuals. The objective of this project was to develop a new online e-learning package to enable staff to learn new skills to be able to offer patients arts-based therapeutic activities. The main activity undertaken was the creation of the online e-learning package. The package brings together e-learning chapters on 14 different health conditions, their characteristics and how they affect a person’s life, together with more than 400 arts-based activities for use by professionals and carers. A total of 8 organisations took part in the project, all working collaboratively, and bringing together their expertise: a university public health team (evaluation and quality control); an NHS mental health service provider; an organisation working with patients with specific conditions (autism); experts in arts therapy and non-verbal communication; an adult education provider; a regional municipality responsible for healthcare; a national mental health association and an e-learning development expert.

Populart project uses art as a vehicle offered unique pathways to adult education for active citizenship, personal development and fulfillment. Populart promotes human development by self-motivation for learning and therefore enhances individual skills development and the ability of each trainee to take responsibility for his own life. Additionally, through the Community Psychology course that POPULART offers, the project serves as a mean to promote the well-being, crisis management, multiculturalism, internationalization and global justice. Populart delivered a methodological framework for using arts in Popular University, and 11 interactive and multimedia courses on Community psychology through Arts. Community Psychology employs various perspectives within and outside of psychology to address issues of communities, the relationships within them, and related people's attitudes and behaviour. Using art as the trigger, Populart combines disciplines which have been isolated from one another under traditional educational models.

N-arts connects the arts to Adult Education. The aim is to highlight the role of the arts in adult education, strengthen the arts facilitators' position and motivate the teachers to develop new methods and approaches. The name N (Non-Intended)-arts implies that the focus is on the creative process rather than on the art product/object/event. The tools provided by the project draw attention to the impact the arts can have on the learning process, social cohesion and wellbeing. The tools supported the facilitators and teachers to articulate and explain N-arts, by applying criteria and techniques of evaluation, and conceptualizing frameworks for the activities in terms of adult education. Models of evaluation: We related the N-arts activities to the dynamic action model “Five Ways to Wellbeing”. This is a well-researched general evaluation system that is commonly applied to projects in the field of adult education, arts and health. It takes outcomes that can be easily understood and assessed into consideration. As a common denominator, this model accommodates the very wide variety of options that the partnership represents. To answer the question how N-arts activities reflect the parameters of wellbeing (connect, be active, take notice, keep learning, give) we used observations of the facilitators, qualitative interviews with the participants and a set of tools that aided the process of critical analysis.

Future Architecture is the first pan-European platform of architecture museums, festivals and producers, bringing ideas on the future of cities and architecture closer to the wider public. The aim of the platform was to identify and explore new models of creative work that could provide future generations in Europe with a more stable perspective, thus contributing to a more harmonious development of the European economy, living environment and society as a whole. In the platform’s European Architecture Programme - series of significant and interconnected architectural happenings and events in Europe -, there were also 2 events directly connected to the theme of health and well-being: Tirana Design Week 2021: Health & Wellbeing in the Post-Pandemic City and Urban Talk 1 / Minimal Dwelling – Maximal Wellbeing – Test 2020.

Questioning the scale and the co-creation of the city, Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale is a large-scale European cooperation project between 12 partners from 11 cities. This platform of interdisciplinary exchanges explores how the inhabitants reclaim the constantly evolving contemporary city. It uses experiments in the urban space as ways of (re)inventing city life, a step to improve well-being and quality of life. Human Cities’ network highlights 13 strong and shared values: Empathy – Well-being – Sustainability – Intimacy – Conviviality -Mobility – Accessibility- Imagination – Leisure – Aesthetics – Sensoriality – Solidarity -Respect. Human Cities is shaped as a multidisciplinary European network composed of various profiles: universities, design centers and design weeks, ICT platforms, service design and creative design consultancies. An exemples of a project activity related to well-being: urban planning students at Ljubljana’s Faculty of Architecture even designed and constructed a wooden pavilion – called a “station of well-being” –which now serves as a meeting place in Bratovševa ploščad.