Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

The objective of this project is to investigate the possibilities and effects of intervening with temporary artistic proposals adapted in hospital and care contexts. The intervention has been developed on the hospital adapting this space as a work study and as a place to show the process of creating the finished pieces, inviting patients and workers to participate in them. The intervention is adapted to the space in which the artist develops, to what will happen there and to the people who inhabit it. It is not a question of taking works designed in abstraction and simply superimposing them on existing hospital spaces, but of cooperating with patients and hospital professionals until creating an installation that is part of their experience of that moment, transforming it.

In March 2013 IWM North and Manchester Museum were successful in a new application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to develop and deliver Inspiring Futures: Volunteering for Wellbeing (if). This unique project was delivered across ten heritage venues to collectively achieve improvement, consistency and quality in volunteering practice as a key route to transforming well-being.

Qisetna’s three-day storytelling workshop in Nottingham led by British storyteller Marion Kenny and Syrian Hakawati (storyteller in Arabic) Bassam Dawood, which aims to showcase the importance & art of storytelling as a way to share and learn ideas, values and practices. Cultural and communication barriers ceased to exist in this workshop as the Syrian newcomers who settled in the UK and a mixture of active members of Nottingham found common ground, connected to their personal treasures.
The 13 participants that experienced emotions such as pain, sadness, happiness and surprise when relaying these stories in relation to their personal treasure. The aims of storytelling workshop are to help build confidence and a sense of identity, acknowledging the diversity as well as to use a story of everyday life to reflect on how storytelling can bring benefits to the people in the community. Storytelling paves a way to open up and tackle problems the Syrian refugees deal with -from social issues to processing trauma from war.
The Qisetna storytelling programme covered different exercises to help the participants feel comfortable, starting off with playing traditional Syrian music. Icebreaking exercise is then carried out, getting a sense of the space; with eyes closed participants walked in circle sensing other walking nearby. Then, one person would stand in the middle of the circle formed by the others, in which the middle person would close their eyes and fall, allowing the circle of participants to catch and push them to the next, as a trust building exercise. Afterwards, the participants would sit in a circle and pass their personal treasure along to the next person and explain to everyone why it is so important to them, which boosts their confidence and may provide them with an idea for their own story.
Then, the people were given basics techniques to propel their story forward, to create personal, fully formed characters and the musical, rhythmic language of storytelling. They told their stories in Arabic and English; a facilitator translated the story simultaneously. Some participants even brought their own musical instruments, including a violin, oud, flute, harp, guitar, which were tuned for a melody everyone knew. The group agreed that music would be incorporated in the stories, to truly feel the scene that they were to delineate.

The project is a journey through a homeless life and it is a conversation between diverse people, from different countries, cultures and experiences. This project draws attention to the importance of the creative arts in the lives of people who are on the margins of society. The exhibition of the project Sing me to Sleep was opened in the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius on September, 2016. The project will continue sharing things regardless of distance of artistic creation and of homelessness.

BOLD | Bringing Out Leaders in Dementia is a social leadership programme for people living with dementia and those who work or live with them. They use a mixture of different creative methods to encourage creativity, innovation and personal flourishing. Many participants are artists who in turn will take the methods into care homes and communities. After taking part in the bold social leadership programme partners join the bold community to collaborate, learn from each other, support and co-create with a shared purpose of working towards a world where everyone with dementia can flourish.

The Inclusive Memory project aims at promoting the building of a common shared social memory realised through a museum based social inclusive system, through the link Art-Health-Well-being. The core idea of the project stems from the potential benefits of the cooperation between HEIs, Health and Social care Institutions and Museums, as a strategic partnership to advance in museum education as well as in museum experience in order to support the design, realization, monitoring and evaluation of art-based activities and actions specifically addressed to people with social care and health problems. The Covid 19 pandemic has brought many health systems to collapse.
The Inclusive Memory project wants to promote an innovative strategy for social inclusion, derived from the creation of a new teaching methodology, the use of digital tools and based on the development of transverse competences in both university teachers, students museum users, thus promoting well-being, health and social inclusion. The project is based on the concept which sees museums as teaching and learning environments, and Universities as active social actors, both strengthening their role of cultural integration facilitators. The Inclusive Memory project is developed as a shared process among academics, researchers, healthcare and social care, educators and museum professionals and involves different partners who already showed their interest in participating and their commitment to the project goals. The main objectives of the project are:
- the creation and the start of a new social inclusion system (especially for people with social care and health problems) based on the link Art-Health-Well-being, which can prove to be a best practice from which Health and social care institutions, cultural organizations and educational institutions from all over Europe will be able to draw inspiration;
- the design of innovative didactic paths for the promotion of social inclusion and the development of transverse skills for future museums professionals, social care givers, school teacher sand healthcare personnel based on the link Art-Health-Well-being;
- the possibility to continue organising innovative didactic paths for health and well-being promotion, also within school, health and social care institutions and museums thanks to the support of professionals who will have been properly trained on the matter, to compass and put in practice innovative art-based approaches dedicated to social inclusion.
The methodology applied in this project is based on the logic of converting the theoretical concept of Museum as inclusive spaces for Health and Well-being development into a practical protocol of teaching scenarios adapted to specific local communities needs and newly created open educational resources (the Inclusive Memory MOOC), testing the protocol and OERS into ready-to-use courses and using the test outcomes to enrich the theoretical basis.

Abbracci AMO ci project was born to build opportunities for meeting between the cured and the carers, where they can work together to the humanization of places and care relationships. Some of the activities include making the hospital a more familiar place, facilitating opportunities for meeting between them; to foster a profound sense of belonging among all the employees; to open the hospital to the local community; to develop artistic skills among all employees of the Mauritian community; to organize artistic exhibition; live music events; theatrical performance with former aphasic patients.

The cooperation agreement signed for a period of five years between Gavella theater and the Zagreb Institute for Health Culture aims to improve mutual professional, educational, cultural and health cooperation in the areas of promoting the protection and improving the health of Croatian veterans and members of their families. As part of this cooperation, emphasis will be placed on joint creation of plays based on verbatim theater to sensitize experts and the public about the nation's leading health problems; designing therapeutic activities for Croatian veterans according to the principles of creative (art) therapies and various programs with the aim of improving culture in the community; joint production of publications and other forms of multimedia communication.

Music Therapy Master's degree programme at Aalborg University was established in 1982 and is the only one of its kind in Denmark. The aim of the programme is to provide students with as broad and thorough knowledge as possible of the different areas of music therapy, i.e. music therapy in psychotherapeutic fields of work, medical fields, and special education fields.
Besides the Master's Degree, Aalborg University also has a music therapy research department, which is centered around the international research school, established in 1996, as well as the research clinic, established in 1994 in a collaboration between the university and Aalborg Psychiatric Hospital.

The NEO Educational Program on Art as a Therapeutic Tool aims to teach various specialists the techniques necessary to apply art into their work with adults, in one-to-one sessions or in group sessions. Art therapy can be used as a complementary technique to traditional mental health therapy. The goal of art therapy is to manage behaviors to understand emotions, reduce stress and anxiety, and increase self-esteem. The training program is structured in four modules and is addressed to psychologists.