Art and Culture in Long-term Care and Support

The Art and Culture in Long-term Care and Support program was initiated in collaboration with the RCOAK Foundation, the Sluyterman van Loo Fund and the Ministries of Education, Culture and Science and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The aim of this program is to link culture to long-term care and support, in a structural and sustainable way.
The Art and Culture in Long-term Care and Support program will set out actions on three development lines:
1) Targeted development and dissemination of knowledge from ongoing initiatives: Many cultural initiatives are already underway in long-term care and support. These initiatives are ideally suited to gain experience and knowledge. Priorities are the further inventory of art initiatives and the investigation of active elements and bottlenecks. Practice-oriented research is used to improve the quality of existing initiatives. Within the project is will be explored the way in which effects are described so that they are meaningful for pacients, their environment and healthcare professionals.
2) Research and method development: Within this line, efforts will be made to develop appropriate research methods, preferably mixed-methods instruments. These must be in line with the aspects of positive health, art and culture. When conducting research, the needs of various stakeholders, such as insurers, municipalities and healthcare institutions, will be take into account. Attention is needed for both practical learning from research and the process of embedding in institutions and scaling up initiatives.
3) Anchoring and sustainability: A lot is already happening in the field of art and culture within the long-term care and support sector. However, it is often incidental and the supply is fragmented. Because funding of art initiatives is seen as a major problem, one of the priorities is to develop business cases for various initiatives. The knowledge acquired in the first two lines can be used as evidence for the further development of policy for these crossovers between art and care. Frontrunners in this field and ambassadors can be helpful in further developing, disseminating and embedding the offer. A cross-domain knowledge network ensures a good exchange of knowledge about policy, practice and research.