Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

On Boblberg users can create new social relations and communities based on their common interests. It’s an informal forum where it’s not about setting up and presenting the perfect picture, but rather it’s a space where they have a unique opportunity to find other people in the same situation, with the same interests. On Boblberg new communities are created every day. Thousands of citizens have become a part of a new community through Boblberg. The sky’s the limit when it comes to the possibilities of getting new companions. It can be anything from new friendships, a workout or walking buddy, reading, food, or knitting clubs, a place to volunteer, or something else entirely.

A model for low threshold and inclusive art activities is created in project Art, Inclusion and Social Innovations. Development work is based on co-creation together with participants (youth) and professionals from different sectors. In addition a model for increased employment of artists and creative professionals is built during the course of the project. Both models and other project results are to be implemented in communal and regional service structures in Pirkanmaa region.
Project Art, Inclusion and Social Innovations plans and organizes art interventions together with young unemployed people (NEET and others under 30), art professionals and other cross-sectorial service providers. Participant support is individualized and activities happen both in real life as well as digitally. As a result the young participants’ well-being, inclusion and working and functional capability are enhanced. New routes towards personal empowerment, employment, studies and further paths are created. Expected number of participants in the project is around 250 young persons.
Collaboration with employers from various fields is an important part of the project´s aim to increase supply of work for artists. A network of companies is to offer new working opportunities within the field of social, well-being and employment services for professional artists and creative workers.
The project is divided into three phases, first phase being the piloting of the operating models. The models and best practices will then be re-tested, expanded and later embedded in the art, culture and well-being services for the young unemployed persons in Pirkanmaa region.
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is the coordinator in the project and provides the project structure with the knowledge on inclusion of the unemployed and other vulnerable groups. The Cultural Centre PiiPoo and City of Tampere are the partnering organizations and executing expert bodies of the project. The project is funded from the European Social Fund’s priority axis of social inclusion.

It is an artistic project conceived and curated by Daniela Di Gennaro, which aims to develop awareness-raising initiatives on the issue of gender-based violence and is aimed at different target audiences, from children to adults, by using the language of art as a facilitator of communication. The project intends to use all artistic disciplines, from visual art, to dance, to theater, to music. Meetings, workshops, laboratories, performances are organized, which use catalyzing expressive languages ​​to reach the very young range in particular. The activities are taking place in a room set up for the occasion whose setting is designed in such a way as to create a warm and welcoming place, in which everyone can feel naturally welcomed and listened to.

In the juvenile detention center of Airola, in the province of Benevento, in southern Italy, the organizers are involving youth in the well-being experiences, developing a new approach based on gamification and theatre. They are creating an original game thanks to meaningful outcomes from the internal communities. Its name “Let me see the moon” comes from the youth’s deep feeling: looking for the light!

MANCHUGE: re-create lab is a multifaceted project that brings the joy of creative craft to a whole new level. The organizers bring people of different categories together in the MANCHUGE community. The format of the lab is aimed at strengthening the psychological health of both the individual and the community, as well as developing emotional intelligence by participating in creative projects and working with different materials. It is important for them to unite people through work, joy and creativity, to make projects for the city, business and society. They promote the values of sustainable and the concept of "zero waste", so they have developed a system to work with manufacturing businesses in their city and receive from them waste paper, cretonne, textiles and wood. They work with these materials and prolong their life by making art. They believe that they can create a large network of laboratories around the world with the MANCHUGE philosophy. MANCHUGE it is a word you shout when everything works out exactly as you intended.

A small user led charity that improves the lives of people living in the locality who are experiencing life changing mental health issues through a range of arts activities and peer support.

Keeping memories is an innovative project by Accademia Carrara in collaboration with ASST Bergamo Est and FERB European Biomedical Research Foundation Onlus, which takes shape in the museum-hospital relationship, becoming part of the offer of paths that see art as treatment, relief and well-being. Keeping memories represents an experimental therapy that responds to non-pharmacological needs, approaches and methods, for which the Alzheimer's Center of Excellence in Gazzaniga is known and appreciated.
Some of the museum's paintings, in the form of reproductions, enter the rooms of the Gazzaniga Center together with sensory elements specially chosen by the working group, made up of museum educators and health workers. With the help of a therapist, the patient goes through a large album of the works and is invited to choose one through which to stimulate memory and emotions. The works thus become silent bearers of experiences, they help feelings to flow and patients to find themselves. In the museum caregivers attend instead a psychological path with psychologist and museum educator.

CareStories. Walks to Nurture Care is a local and European project between Italy, Greece and Poland that aims to create a network of “cultural walks” addressed to people -especially elderly living in internal areas – that have been living long periods of stress, isolation and fear during the Covid pandemic of 2020-2021. The idea has been to create a connection between 3 different territories of Europe, three mountain valleys in Piedmont - Italy, an island territory in the Island of Crete – Greece and Goleniow, a city of the Baltic sea territory – Poland in order to share stories and possible walks to be explored by local inhabitants and tourists. CareStories has been supported by the third round of Culture of Solidarity Fund of European Cultural Foundation in collaboration with Fondazione CRT. The proposal grounded its imaginative and cultural aspects in the potential of perception of Europe as a common country composed of lots of different territories and stories. The urgency enlightened by the project was the persisting isolation and social fear experienced by elderly people as a consequence of lockdowns during the Covid pandemic. This feeling of loneliness and fear of others (also of family members and friends) has led through a permanent state of isolation in a large group of people aged 55+. This isolation, even after the Covid emergency, could have led to a permanent social isolation of people who had already experienced loneliness, especially in small villages and marginal areas. CareStories therefore decided to encourage an active participation of small group of people aged +55 in the re-starting of social activities connected with culture, nature and storytelling.

TO BE is an innovation project on the well-being of university students, the first in Italy, and proposes a pilot action of experimentation and evaluation of the performing arts to support the well-being of students according to the methodology developed by the Social Community Theatre Centre of the University of Turin starting from the scientific evidence collected on the role of the arts in the promotion of physical and mental health by the World Health Organization. The project is part of a national and European programming horizon – from the European Agenda for Culture to the new European programming lines for Education, Culture and Social to the upcoming actions of the PNRR – which brings increasing attention to cultural welfare, or to the cultural and artistic dimension such as social innovation and promotion of well-being and personal and community health. As part of the proposal formed the College Einaudi for an integral growth of the young adult university, the project aims to experiment, evaluate and develop a model of Artist-based intervention to support personal and community well-being through strengthening awareness and ability to care for one's physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Gardens of Aurora is an urban regeneration project, winner of the Creative Living Lab - 3rd Edition public notice promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture realized in collaboration with Opera Barolo, Ufficio Pastorale Migranti, the Cooperativa Sociale Mediterraneo Onlus, the Associazione Generazione Migranti, the Accademia Albertina of Turin and the Casa Cinema of Turin.
Gardens of Aurora is an art-based urban regeneration project that has developed on the double axis the redevelopment of spaces and the development of communities: design, architecture and art as tools for reactivate and consolidate the sense of belonging to forgotten places. The approach adopted was "bottom-up" with co-design and co-construction practices, realized through a perspective intergenerational and multicultural, also given by the context in which the intervention was inserted. This has meaning to give value and space, through dedicated activities, to the emergence of the needs and desires of citizens on public and community space and the creation of a common imaginary, capable of generating processes of re-appropriation of urban space by the community of the territory. The project has responded to the needs that have emerged strongly in the pandemic crisis of open spaces and cultural and provides structural value for the Aurora district of the gardens of the Barolo Social District (DSB) through a process of co-planning with the inhabitants accompanied by Teatro Popolare Europeo | BAC Space (TPE | BAC space) and partners.
On June 30, 2022, the Great Parade of Aurora Gardens arrived in the city. To the rhythm of samba, accompanied by majorettes and tambourines, parading with over 100 signs and a walking garden with as many plants, an artistic, festive and ritual procession of over 300 people celebrated the importance of urban gardens crossing the streets of Aurora.