Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

This initiative is an inclusive artistic practice for teenagers inspired by “Dance Well movement and research for Parkinson”. The practice takes place on the stage of Council’s theatre, every week for two months dance teachers and dancers meet a group of teenagers and their school teachers. Campus Well is a project which enables youngsters and old people to activate and improve their soft skills such as, for example, creativity, flexibility, self-perception. Through the artistic practice the project aims to build relationships and understanding between those who live and learn in the same community, but may not have opportunity to get together. Activities support sharing skills, memories and ideas between the different generations.

The exhibition ”Painting for Health” by artist Eli Ronovska showed how painting is used for a therapeutic purpose. In image/art therapy, the participant uses various artistic materials to communicate, find balance both in body and soul and increase his well-being. In the exhibition was presented the authentic material made by participants who have undergone this form of therapy. The exhibition hosted also an workshop in which the visitors painted under the guidance of art therapist Eli Ronovska.

Youth Radio proposed to engage at-risk and low income youth in music composition/production, hip hop, journalism, and community outreach to paint a portrait of their vision for a healthy Oakland. Students studied the seven areas of well-being, addressing them creatively through music composition, recording, and performance. Young artists received training in music production, creative writing and critical thinking through weekly writing workshops that served as prompts for their musical compositions. Under the guidance of teaching artists, students developed and recorded music articulating their vision of a healthy community, exploring critical community health issues, and proposing solutions. Youth Radio developed a curriculum guide incorporating lesson plans, working with local educators to make use of the project in classroom settings. With the success of this project, Remix Your Life will be ongoing, focusing on changing themes.

The purpose of the project Paint for Health | Creative rehab Skaraborg is to help reduce stress-related mental illness by offering resource-strengthening image therapeutic methods. The method is a combination of creative and reflective conversations and can be seen as a synthesis between psychotherapy, pedagogy and artistic design. Image therapy offers methods that activate resources through play, curiosity and creation. The artistic therapies make it possible to put thoughts into words and go to a deeper and more bodily level. The working method includes image creation, conversation, writing and integration based on a given theme, but with personalized adapted approach where the participants themselves actively participate in their own healing process and in the design of the method.

The Dragon Project was run with the ambition of developing health-promoting cultural activities online and was aimed at young adults who for various reasons withdraw from social contexts and suffered from mental illness. The focus has been on developing a method and a web application that can be used in the form of a study group where culture and joint reflection become a support for young people between 16 and 29 years of age with mental illness. The project owner was the association Sensus. The purpose was to encourage cultural interest, social community and digital participation, which leads participants getting out of their exclusion and having the opportunity to be part of a social context outside the network as well.

Book start is a national initiative targeted to parents and adults in the vicinity of young children (0-3 years), with the aim of stimulating language development at an early stage. Parents are encouraged to talk, read, sing, rhyme and chant with the child. In this way, the child's language and interest in reading are developed. Bookstart is based on collaboration between public libraries, child healthcare and preschool, all of which have a mission to work with young children's language development.

Freja Musikteater is an ensemble consisting of amateur actors with diagnoses within the autism spectrum. In the autumn of 2020, the group celebrated 15 years of performances and in November 2021 the entire business was presented in a retrospective exhibition in Spira's foyer. The Freja Musikteater business has been around since 2004. It all started with their own life stories and finding a suitable way of working. The goal was to contribute to an increased quality of life of the actors. Freja Musikteater produces original performances - often based on the ensemble's own lives and experiences. Freja works with different means of expression in her designs where both voice and body can be heard. The result is lots of talent that blossoms into a properly permissive atmosphere.

The project "Meetings with memories" was inaugurated in 2013 as a nationwide museum project aimed at people diagnosed with dementia and their relatives. Meetings with memories is a collaboration between the National Museum, the Dementia Association, the Alzheimer's Foundation and the Swedish Dementia Center. Through the project, museum educators around the country were trained so that they can arrange their own special exhibitions at their museums for people with dementia and their relatives.

In recent years, it has been more and more confirmed that cultural activities promote well-being and have many positive effects for both the individual and society. Wermland Opera wanted to find new ways of working and methods to create well-being for more people, both healthy and sick, through culture. In this respect, they created the Culture & Health programme. In the first stage, the initiative is aimed at the target groups of the disabled, people in rehabilitation of chronic illness, mental illness and the elderly. But the initiative also includes health-promoting cultural activities for healthy people.

Culture for the Elderly project is a collaborative project between Hagfors municipality's health and care department and Hagfors library. It is run with the support of Region Värmland and ABF (Workers' Education Association). The goal of the project is for each nursing home to have active representatives and that culture in health care shall increase the residents' access to culture and participation in cultural life as well their mental health. The purpose is to provide staff at nursing homes in Hagfors municipality with tools and methods for self-creation of activities and to give them in-depth study knowledge of the importance of culture for good health.