Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Relink is a climate friendly vision for transforming the Westlink and M2 bridges to help relink Belfast. The project has been developed since 2019 through an extensive community and statutory stakeholder engagement process in association with the Public Health Agency. The aim of Relink is to improve the health and social well-being of everyone using the Westlink and M2 bridges, through rejuvenation and animation of its footbridges. The bridges are being reconceived as shared positive spaces that focus on connectivity and climate resilience with the primary focus of improving wellbeing in the area.

The Foyle Reeds seek to be a cultural installation with the dual purpose of a suicide prevention mechanism on the Foyle Bridge. This installation would be the largest public sculpture in Northern Ireland and aims to develop and inform suicide prevention measures for cities worldwide. Linking the Atlantic Way and Causeway Coastal routes this bridge also links Ireland and Northern Ireland. Utilised and developed to its full potential, the Foyle Bridge has the ability to enhance tourism of the wider area, following the success of the Peace Bridge and the landmark that it has become in the city of Derry.

For the last 15 years Ex Cathedra a charity about singing, through its pioneering Singing Medicine projects bring wellbeing through singing to children and adults, both in hospital and at home. These projects helped combat isolation, as well as supporting the improvement of the mental health and well-being of hospitalized children, but once the pandemic ensued the usual weekly visits stopped. In an extraordinary piece of timing, UK leading choir Ex Cathedra was working with Singing Medicine patients and Birmingham Children’s Hospital Chaplaincy team before anyone had heard of coronavirus, to create what is thought to be the world’s first hospital-wide children and young people’s virtual patient choir, called the Lifting Spirits Choir. They are making interactive singing-play films for children and young people, over 130 Singing Medicine interactive films are available, free to access on YouTube, for the patients, and for all young children and families everywhere.

#DanceAndWellBeing campaign initiated by European Dancehouse Network (EDN) and its members wants to reaffirm the essential role of dance in the societies and in maintaining the physical and mental well-being. With weekly online dance classes led by EDN members associated artists, they open the space to everyone, not just to professional dancers. Participation on dance classes via Zoom is free of charge and no prior dancing skills are required. Dance classes took place from November 2020 to February 2021.

In April 2021, a Covid-19 vaccine center was be set up at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rivoli, on the outskirts of Turin, Italy. Vaccinations was administered in the galleries of a Claudia Comte exhibition where visitors were ensconced in a specially-created audiovisual installation incorporating large-scale murals and a soothing sound work.

Since time immemorial, singing and making music have also been used for healing purposes. Music touches and connects - especially when it is created by singing together without any performance claims. The international non-profit network Singing Hospitals Association has set itself the goal of helping to shape a healthcare system in which the healing power of singing can be experienced and recognized by patients, therapists and representatives of the healthcare system as an approach to disease management and healthcare. For this purpose, the network offers a wealth of further training modules, which tailor singing offers to the special needs of patients and exploit the diverse potential of singing.

Sounds for the Soul is an unique offering for all that had a difficult period and implies a personal one-on-one musical encounter between the participant and a professional classical musician in the comfort of participants home. The musicians are firstly connect with participants by listening, and then he or she will choose and perform a piece of music just for participants. All this interaction happens while the participant is in the comfort of their homes, in Brussels. It is a reflection in music echoing your feelings of the moment, a way participants are looking to their challenges from a different angle. Cause everyone deserves a bit of kindness.
The artists are professional classical musicians playing a variety of instruments and coming from different cultural backgrounds. They usually perform on the bigger stages of Europe and are specially trained for the project to make sure the encounter will happen in the most empathic, pleasant and respectful way.

This Spring School wants to support professionals working in or with the cultural heritage sector in the development of outreach programs using heritage collections for well-being activities. The focus during the Spring School is on green spaces of care and community engagement. For five days the participants, depending on their level of experience, are going to be guided in developing an offering ranging for people with dementia to working with communities around mental health issues. The participants are coming into contact with a wide range of methods and instruments that already are been used by inspiring cases were cultural heritage collections are used for the improvement of the well-being of specific target groups.

Since 2010, CoRe has been the choir of people in the homes for the elderly of the Empolese-Valdelsa region, open to the participation of family members, volunteers, operators and all citizens, volunteers, operators and all citizens, in collaboration with local administrations and cultural institutions, which has, as a point of reference, the Chiarugi Foundation. The project aims to create sharing and aggregation, using music and theater as a means. Integration through art, in a context where the relationship is central, aims to give older people living in assisted living facilities a recognized social role.
It is an approach aimed at promoting the person, the development of their autonomy and awareness, the creation of paths of belonging to the territory understood as a continuity of citizens, through the proposal of social and cultural animation projects. Animating with elderly people living in sheltered structures means putting them in the perspective of a continuous presence, which makes daily intervention its strong point.
Chiarugi Foundation is convinced that the activity of the CoRe it still has a lot of potential: it is a powerful tool that allows elderly people welcomed in day care centers or sheltered housing, to participate in the social and cultural life of the territory, to tell their stories and be heard.

Sonoramente is proposed by Walter Vinci Onlus Association which works in the field of social fragility to support, promote and share a culture of prevention.
Sonoramente is a music therapy and choir singing project for people with Alzheimer and cognitive impairment and for their caregivers. In the course of four years of activity, the choir has involved around 40 choristers aged between 70 and 85 each year, with the participation of several young volunteers as supporting voices. Participation in the choir is, to date, completely free of charge for patients and their families. Over time, a real model of intervention has been developed, with a scientific coordinator and two music therapists, to replicate the format in other community contexts, both outside and inside RSA, and to promote a digital channel of intervention so as not to lose potential choristers unable to move.