Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

The Exhibition Center of the Hospital Professor Doutor Fernando Fonseca (HFF) had a new exhibition, organized in partnership with the Municipality of Amadora and one of the themes of the exhibition was to raise awareness against Covid-19 through comics. The Amadora City Council intended to raise awareness of measures to prevent contagion with the Covid-19 virus and challenged a group of authors, associated with Amadora BD, to create a set of original illustrations for various billboards throughout the county. These works were based on the recommendations of the Directorate-General for Health. This initiative aimed to strengthen public health, through constant awareness of the local community. The presence of comics in the public spaces of the Municipality of Amadora was an element that facilitated the transmission of these messages addressed to the community.

The main mission of the Art4Me project is to promote mental health through art therapy to adults with mental health problems and highlight the importance of mental health promotion by visual arts, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of millions of Europeans living with psychiatric disorders. The aim is to exchange good practices in managing successful mental health awareness campaigns such as the use of art in mental health festivals. There will be a a training entitled "Reducing stigma and discrimination of adults with mental illness and facilitating their social inclusion with the use of art" (July 2022), a meeting in Lisbon (October 2022) and a final meeting at the office of the European Parliament in Athens (February 2023). During the project, the project will examine the situation in each partner country (Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy and Portugal) concerning the use of art therapy and the use of art in mental health promotion. Two festivals will be organised on the occasion of world mental health day in October 2021 and October 2022. People with mental health problems from Italy, Croatia, Portugal and Greece will be involved in the project during the physical or virtual focus groups.

The main objective is to reach the largest number of people to whom to offer activities conceived and designed to counteract loneliness, promote socialization and well-being, to regain confidence and will to live. The main expected result is to create well-being among the people who decide to get involved in the planned activities, which we can translate into pleasure, commitment and awareness in what is being done. The planned activities concern various cultural and artistic sectors. There are contemporary dance workshops which, in addition to providing various benefits to the body and mind, are able to promote socialization and interrelationships; all this, with the help of professional dancers and making use of informal settings, can become a "cure" in the sense that the experts will take care of the participants through supervision, concern and attention towards them. Interactive music workshops will also be set up using any disused object or material being able to produce a sound.

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-Wellbeing. It 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.