Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Over the past 15 years, several artists have been commissioned to examine the hospital environment, processes and location from an artistic perspective. This initiative can act as a new perspective in care development. These assignments have consisted of residency grants and resulted in three artistic processes and works:
- Matilda Ruta's video work Sjukhusfåglarna, which is installed in the diorama at the children's clinic in Gävle and whose story has been published in the form of the children's book Ninna och sjukhusfåglarna. Matilda Ruta spent time together with chronically ill and hospitalized children and made art therapy with them for a couple of months, trying to emphasize the child's experience into the hospital.
- Anna Asplind's site-specific experience Gävle – Dancewalks at Gävle Hospital. The 45-minute soundtrack is composed by Tadklimp, based solely on hospital sounds.
- Marie Bondeson's artist book The elephant and me. It is a kind of artistic diary depiction of different perspectives on a psychosis ward based on study visits, workshops, dialogues and joint reflections with employees, patients and family associations in Gävle as well as in other places.

Through the Culture for Health Conference, organizers want to increase knowledge about the importance of culture for health and contribute to the implementation of some further initiatives. Participating in or experiencing cultural activities stimulates the senses and can contribute to social inclusion and a sense of belonging and meaning. Furthermore, research shows that the use of culture can shorten the care period and be a complement to the rehabilitation process.
Culture for Health Conference presented the latest research and good examples of how can be used culture to promote health and well-being. During the event participants took part in seminars and workshops, and listen to interesting lecturers.
The organizer of the conference was the Culture for Health Steering Group; Region Jönköping County, Jönköping County Museum, Jönköping County Education Association, Jönköping County Archives Association, Jönköping County Homeland Association and the municipalities in Jönköping County in collaboration with Gislaved Municipality.

Ways to Well-being Youth Creative Project is a 7-week project, between February-March 2018 that took place at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in which 10 young volunteers co-create 5 short films and co-produce a workshop for a Gallery Late. They learned about the collections and history of the Gallery, were introduced to the 5 Ways To Well-being and mindfulness techniques, experienced a well-being-themed creative art activity and were inspired by these experiences to create their films and co-produce their own workshop. They worked collaboratively with Dulwich Picture Gallery staff from different departments, as well as an external arts facilitator, artist and media company. The volunteers co-created resources that are promoted in a variety of ways by Dulwich Picture Gallery and partners like the SLaM Recovery College, with the aim of encouraging young people to use museum and gallery spaces and collections as inspiration for activities to improve mental health and well-being. In addition, learning from this pilot collaborative project were embedded into future well-being-themed workshops for these and other audiences, and these volunteer roles were continued and enhanced following participant feedback.

The Roda de Palhaço group of artists is responsible for a special artistic intervention in the pediatric wards of two public hospitals in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Playing the clowns Adamastor, Shei-Lá and Nena, the artists served more than 10000 children back in 2016 and brought energy to transform the behavior of patients, companions, doctors and nurses at the Hospital Federal dos Servidores do Estado and IPPMG /Fundão. The aim was to make powerful artistic interventions in hospitals, bringing access to the art of clowning to the low-income population and to provoke a state of joy in children and companions during hospitalization, to develop new ways of working in health and to transform the hospital environment in a more humanized place.

The State Hospital of Clinical Attention, in Cariacica colaborated with a group of artists who painted all the walls of the institution. Also the institution organized MC battles and musical shows. The event was open to the public and its goal was to promote the integration of hospital patients within society and promote their cultural activities inside the institution. The action was carried out by the Secretary of State for Culture (Secult) in partnership with the Central Única das Favelas.

Black Canvas was an international youth exchange program for young people aged 16 to 30, coming from Latvia, Hungary, Poland and Greece. The aim of the project was to make young people aware of importance of taking care of mental well-being and to provide tools of expressing emotions in a constructive and creative way, giving them the key to reason with themselves through reflection. Within the boundaries of Black Canvas project, participants worked on series of creative works, starting from drawing paintings and all the way to theatrical performance on stage.

We All Art | Art and Health is an Erasmus+ project launched by the Art Department of IES Ruiz de Alda of San Javier, a small town in Southeast Spain. Three other European schools have joined this project: from Bulgaria, Croatia and Latvia. Their common concern is to promote healthy school and social environments, places that promote physical and emotional well-being. This search for our students' well-being has art as hub for the all the activities promoted in the project: from the initiatives to arise awareness about health, to the artworks that can transform the schools and local communities into healthier places to live and learn.
The aims of the project is to create materials and resources open for other schools and organizations, as well as artworks able to transform our schools. Students, taking part in the project, met in Spain, Croatia, Bulgaria and Latvia in order to share experience of learning in their respective schools and environments, to get training by various experts (therapists, social workers etc.) and finally to participate in art workshops tackling issues of social and group inclusion, cultural differences, frailness of life, importance of health in the society and other questions related to public health and well-being. Artworks created during the workshops as well as the methodology behind them has been collected and discussed on the Twinspace forums.
The four partner schools are: IES Ruiz de Alda (San Javier, Spain), SU za HNI "Konstantin Preslavski" (Varna, Bulgaria), Škola likovnih umjetnosti (Split, Croatia) and Mālpils novada vidusskola (Mālpils Latvia).

In the Cultural Experience Guides project, the organizers create new kinds of business opportunities and work in the intersection of culture, nature sites and tourism. This will create new jobs for artists and cultural workers who are unemployed, at risk of being unemployed, underemployed or repetitively unemployed, fully employed or entrepreneurs.
They are creating a transformative cultural tourism operating model and a network of agents to help tourists find new experiences in Northern Ostrobothnia. They also use the operating model to produce cultural experiences for vulnerable target groups for example in care institutions, public spaces and homes, also digitally if necessary.

The Senior Theater project took place in the municipality of Silves, in the Algarve. The initiative, conceived and implemented by technicians from the social action sector and the culture sector of the Municipality of Silves, aimed to be a complementary action to the program developed within the scope of the promotion of active ageing, which mostly included physical activities. The idea of ​​promoting theatrical activity was suggested by elements of the senior groups, who already participated in other initiatives of the Poles of Education to the Long Life of the Municipality of Silves.

Music Network was established by the Arts Council in 1986 to develop music on a nationwide basis. The organisation is committed to making music accessible to all
people in Ireland, regardless of circumstance or location.
Various healthcare centres around the country participated in the initial Concerts in Healthcare Environments project, including residential centres for older people, day
centres for older people, central remedial clinics, residential centres for adults with learning difficulties, educational training centres for young people with physical and/or
learning disabilities and one general hospital. In this initial project, 22 concerts were held in 22 centres. Nine musicians were involved in the concerts, which drew an estimated audience of 900 people.