Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

The project Culture for Health inside the Addiction Center investigated an area of ​​growth interest and research by seeing the human being as a whole where psyche and body are connected, culture can complement traditional medical care. The Addiction Center saw an opportunity to integrate cultural initiatives also in addiction care and a collaboration with the Competence Center for Culture and Health at the Stockholm Region has begun with Maija Segle Konstenius as project manager. It is a project where there are bubbles of different initiatives and they are very enthusiastic to find opportunities to bring culture into the treatment work or on the premises.

Since 2017 Horsens Healthy City have started annual cultural groups for citizens with vulnerabilities. Horsens Sund By has for many years used culture to promote citizens sense on community. Horsens Sund By work from a broad concept of health, where people's well-being and mental health are in focus and not just people's physical health and the absence of illness. The starting point is Horsens Sund By's 30-year membership of WHO's Healthy Cities Network. In relation to well-being and mental health, concepts such as meaningfulness and good social relations are at the center.
The target group has been adults outside the labor market. The meetings have been in the daytime on weekdays, twice a month. One meeting with focus on cultural experiences and activities/workshops such as guided reading, painting workshops, theatre and concerts, visits to museums etc. and one meeting with social networking over coffee and cake. Participants have typically been people with chronic disorders to a mild to moderate degree, people with limited networks and people with an openness to culture but not cultural consumers to a greater extent. Most participants have been 60+ and women. A fairly large proportion have been widows or relatives of a spouse with e.g. dementia. Some have had chronic disorders of a physical nature or disability. Some have had anxiety and depression to a moderate degree. A small group have been unemployed or on early retirement. And finally, a small group in general has had a limited social network. Some have been relatively resourceful broadly understood.
In the interviews with the participants before (and after) participation in the culture group (done by external evaluator), the importance of good social relations and meaningfulness for the experience of the participants' own well-being is emphasized: Security in the close communities, being seen and heard, etc. But meaningfulness is also important to them. For example, to be in motion, to be challenged, to develop, to experience. A general sense of well-being is also important, both physically and mentally.

Back to the future! is a cultural participation project and a festival dedicated to contemporary themes and artistic languages. Back to the future! designs new relationships between culture and citizenship, between people of different generations and with different biographies, experiencing art as a deep sharing and discovery of the potential of a territory. Back to the future! was born from an intergenerational artistic co-creation process, Let’s Keep In Touch, and from an under 30 participatory direction, Catch Up!, to realise an innovative festival in the Quartiere Adriano.
Catch Up! is a training and co-design process, a participatory artistic direction formed by a group of youngsters under 30 experimenting in the realisation of the BTTF festival. It is a process focused on transferring skills in the interpretation of contemporary languages and in the management of multidisciplinary and cross-media events. The Catch Up! group is the protagonist of the process of cultural programming, organisation and promotion of the BTTF festival, where it expresses its own point of view on the present.
Let’s Keep in Touch is a journey in which people from different generations and biographies get involved in the co-creation of an immersive performance, a collective story of Quartiere Adriano. The group shares the ideation, realisation and presentation of the work, involving the local community and defining the most urgent and compelling themes. The artwork is programmed within the BTTF festival schedule.
Magnete is the new Community Point within the Lacittaintorno programme by Fondazione Cariplo in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan. A place for care and culture, a space for relations and plurality for the Quartiere Adriano and the city. Magnete proposes a hybrid and multifunctional model, combining art, live performances, food, training, social inclusion, innovation and much more, to give back to the territory and the city a place where to experiment the theme “Care as Culture. Culture as Care”.
Located in the north-east of Milan, Quartiere Adriano is a peripheral area, with an agricultural and industrial past, today a residential area. A heterogeneous district, capable of including different cultures, creating different relationships with the city centre and bringing its past into dialogue with new visions for the future.
This is a project by Ecate, within the scope of La Città Intorno, a program of Fondazione Cariplo, in collaboration with Magnete, Risonanze Network, Dominio Pubblico, cheFare, Sinitah

Dubbelsidigt was a pilot project on the ways in which aesthetics, art and art-related conversations affect human physical and mental health, with external handling of Professor Britt-Maj Wikström from Akershus University College. Wikström has conducted research in the subject since the 1980s. The pilot project and the teaching was about how the spatial environment people are living in affects our health. The work was carried out in connection with the renovation of the Jakobstad's social and health care work department, where art and design have a central role. The result was an aesthetically pleasing care environment there double-sided photographic art and interior design plays a central role.

Over a priod of 2 years, Kulturmetropolen organize writing groups in 8 different municipalities for groups of citizens, who all have mental heath challenges. The classes are taught by professional authors, who all have experience in working with vulnerable citizens, and have insight and knowledge on how to create a safe environment for the participants. The aim of the group is not to professionalize the participants, nor to function as therapy, but to create a space, where they can reflect on themselves, have a break from the challenges, they face in other aspects of their life, and help them find other personal resources. Each municipality defines which group, they offer the writing classes to - users of the social psychiatry centres, people who suffer from stress or anxiety, teenagers with mental health issues or others. If social workers or others need to be present to help a citizen, they also participate in the activity, thereby creating a sense of equality, and avoiding the sense of being observed. a researcher from Human Health at The Southern University of Denmark is currently following two of the classes in order to establish the outcome, and whether the participants experience an increase in the sense of self-efficacy, quality of life etc.

With the mental health program Open up with Vincent, the Van Gogh Museum wants to make a positive contribution to the conversation about mental health through art and the life story of Vincent van Gogh. Vincent van Gogh experienced the healing power of art in his life and drew comfort and hope from it. For him, painting was the only remedy for the psychological complaints with which he struggled. Scientific research also shows that art promotes health and general well-being. In this time, when many young adults indicate that they experience stress and gloomy feelings and the consequences of a two-year pandemic have a major impact on our mental well-being, art can play a positive role in preventing or mitigating psychological complaints.
The Open up with Vincent program was developed together with young adults, care institutions and professionals specialized in mental health. It consists of activities such as mindfulness sessions and painting workshops in the museum, at external locations and online. In addition, teaching materials for primary and secondary education are also available. Artworks are a great source or 'anchor' to practice mindfulness. People experience mindfulness with their senses, such as looking. A museum is therefore a pleasant, accessible place. You step out of the issues of the day for a while, look at art, and be amazed. On some Wednesdays there are mindful art viewing sessions in the museum at some of the masterpieces in the Van Gogh and the Olive Groves exhibition. There is a mindfulness trainer that takes participants on guided meditations of approximately seven minutes on the paintings Olijfgaard (1889) and Kreupelhout (1889) by Vincent van Gogh.

Born to Read is a program to enhance the inclination to read in children from a very early age. Born in 1999, is promoted by the professional and cultural organizations of librarians and paediatricians: Associazione Culturale Pediatri (ACP), Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (AIB) and Centro per la Salute del Bambino (CSB).
Born to Read is a nationwide program which aims at constantly involving the community in order to give children a better chance to develop from an intellectual and emotional point of view. The organization of the project is based on a strong decentralization, on the establishment of a network which aims at becoming ever more widespread in order to reach the greatest possible number of local realities. The network includes librarians, pediatricians, educators, teachers, associations willing to put their energies into the project. At a local level a commitment is undertaken to implement the project with the greatest flexibility and adaptation to the different situations. There are more than 500 local projects covering about 35% of the national population, with the participation of 8000 professionals among librarians, pediatricians, social/health professionals, nurseries’ and playschool’s educators. The national committee, composed of 5 librarians and 5 pediatricians, takes care of conforming local actions to the inspiring principles of the program, looking after public relations and communications at a national level, the publication of informative and promotional material. The training of the local project promoters is one of the most important tasks of the national committee. Another important activity of the national committee is caring for and producing bibliographical tools to guide readers among the publishing novelties every three years.
Born to Read strategy to reach the goal is to set up local working groups, supported by public libraries and pediatricians, which are involved in raising awareness about importance of reading to children among all families so that reading is perceived as a cultural and social improvement for children and indirectly for all the adults implied. This activity has also been oriented towards increasing and updating the library collections for children, kindling an interest in many libraries and in public opinion for the need of public cultural services for children.
Born to Read has stimulated a great activity of selection and suggestion of the best books for children under 6 both at a national and local level. Born to Read has produced national materials which can be given to families (a leaflet with suggestions on how and what to read to children and bookmarks) and to professionals (a brochure with a complete presentation of the project and the materials available).

In response to the world wide increase in Mental Health & Well-being issues suffered by people, particularly by women and girls as a result of Covid 19 lockdown 2020- 2021, a team of multi-art form artists from Scottish Opera worked with a group of women in the rural Scottish Borders region to develop coping mechanisms via the medium of music, visual arts and creative writing to address a range of issues including loneliness, social isolation and feelings of disempowerment and to help build emotional resilience.
Workshops in creative writing, musical composition and a wide range of visual arts including photography, mixed media and technologies and sculpture were delivered in two locations in the Scottish Borders region for around 40 participants ranging in age from 17 to 65 years. The workshops were promoted through a range of local health care and cultural partners including the NHS Border Mental Health services teams and the social prescribing network. The sessions were advertised for women, transwomen and those wholly or partially identified as female as the aim was to provide a safe and supported emotional environment for the participants to discuss and explore creative responses to a wide range of life challenges including loneliness and social isolation, bereavement as well as relationship issues, coercion, lack of self determination and self-esteem. Many of the women and girls who attended the weekly workshops shared their own experiences of situations where they felt unable to control their own lives or felt dominated or repressed by those around them. They were encouraged to contribute to the development of a narrative structure for the (eventual) exhibition - divided (like many operas ) into four 'acts' - each of which represented a stage in the disintegration of Lucy/Lucia's mental and emotional health: however with the final act (IV) being an affirmation of the truth that they had capacity to change their personal narrative and avoid becoming a 'victim' like Lucy/Lucia.

VisualEars Rooms project explored the impact of a virtual activity involving vision and auditory stimuli on the mood of the audience. Eight musical pieces were selected, and 28 visual artists from around the world each visualized two musical pieces. 56 works of art were created and hung in eight 3D virtual rooms. Upon measuring the mood of the audience pre and post the exhibit, VisualEars Room showed an improvement of the mood of the visitors.

The key mission of the European Dance Network (EDN) is to cooperate in securing a sustainable future for the dance sector and to improve relevance for diverse dance among society. In the pursuit of this mission, EDN initiated the #DanceAndWellBeing campaign as a reaction to the many restrictions to training, practicing, learning, rehearsing and presenting dance across Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Between November 2020 and February 2021, 17 weekly online dance classes led by artists associated with 12 EDN members took place. Participation in the dance classes was free of charge and neither prior dancing skills nor a dance background were required.
The campaign built on the increasing awareness that artists and dance professionals’ practices are shaped by the notion of ‘care’ alongside a set of transversal factors and values, including equality, accessibility, diversity and well-being. In this context, and through its campaign, EDN wanted to reaffirm the essential role of dance in our societies and in maintaining physical and mental well-being. EDN is also aware of the potential connections between dance practices and policy and societal goals such as those outlined in the SDGs. All of these aspects underpin the Dance and Well-being report.
Dance and Well-being Report represents a review of evidence and policy perspectives: how dance can contribute to ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages