Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Luoghi Comuni is based on the recognition of the effectiveness of cultural and creative activities as a factor in promoting individual and collective well-being. Luoghi Comuni enables a group of people to enjoy cultural opportunities and actively contribute on the accessibility of these spaces, benefiting the cultural organizations involved and the whole community. The goal of the project is to facilitate the identification of kind places that enable and generate well-being in collaboration with citizens with divers fragilities but also to collaborate with cultural organizations for improving their services.

The City of Turku’s MyLibrary Project started with a project in Spring 2018 that found ways to bring culture and leisure services home to those who had difficulty in getting out to those services because of their advanced age, illness or disability. The principal target group were older people living at home and in nursing homes. The outcome of this project was a service offered by the Recreation Division in the City of Turku that allows residents to enjoy culture even when access to services is difficult. The service is free of charge for maximum accessibility. The digital services of the Recreation Division have been brought together on an accessible website (omakirjasto.fi). Some third-party services of high quality and free of charge are also included. The aim was to make the website as clear, easy to use and attractive as possible. MyLibrary provides access to
the selected services even for clients who have no previous experience of Internet use. The service can also accommodate a client’s possibly diminished ability to use the service due to a memory disorder or decline in motor functions, etc. Navigating the site has been made as easy as possible. Many clients have a hard time finding interesting and high-quality content online, so the selection in this service is deliberately limited on the principle of ‘less is more’. Having a clearly defined selection also makes it easy for staff in nursing homes to find digital cultural content. The website allows access for instance to audio books, e-books, concerts of the Turku Philharmonic, photograph collections of the Turku Museum Centre and exercise activities.

It is important for museums to devise a wide range of accessible services. In recent years, particular attention has been paid to services for people who are unable to visit museums themselves. In the city of Tampere, this includes ‘sound museums’ for lending out. For older people in nursing homes, and particularly those with memory disorders, it is important to be able to recall past events from their lives with others. Recalling the past exercises the mind and the memory and helps reflect on a person’s life journey up to the present day. Sharing memories boosts self-esteem and fosters a sense of safety and bonding. Every one of us sometimes recalls something we have not thought about for decades. How did that suddenly come into my mind? Old objects, sounds and artworks are excellent tools for unearthing memories of the distant past. In Tampere, concepts called ‘sound museums’ and ‘museum packages’ have been developed, along with a free lending service. Staff at nursing homes or day centres can check out material from the Cultural Education Unit TAITE for a period of about two weeks. There are three sound museums that contain digital audio and video recordings: sounds of people working, of animals and of nature; music; voice clips by famous Finnish radio hosts and actors; and sounds of mechanical household devices and tools. Some are historical sounds that can rarely be heard in everyday life today, if at all. In addition to the sound museums, which travel in briefcases, there are ten museum packages containing objects and photographs offering inspiration for reflection and exploring various themes in art and cultural history. The museum packages draw on the handling collection of Tampere Museums, which consists of items that can be freely handled and examined, and also contain plenty of photos and documents from the archives in digital form.

Espoo Hospital specialises in care for the elderly and in rehabilitation. It also provides support services for older people living at home. The hospital has 247 beds and employs more than 400 nursing and rehabilitation professionals, including one music therapist. Espoo Hospital also has a home hospital, a geriatrics outpatient clinic and a palliative care outpatient clinic. The health care and rehabilitation services provided by the hospital under primary health care are mainly intended for older people. Espoo Hospital has made a commitment to investing in art and culture, as this is seen as conducive to patient recovery, amongst other things. For instance, an extensive collection of artworks from EMMA, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, are on display in the public premises and on the wards. In 2018, Espoo Hospital ran a project entitled ‘Art supporting recovery’, involving a lot of performers, music and dancing. Music therapy was given on the hospice ward to comfort family members, and an informal carers’ art group opened up new perspectives on their work as a morale booster. In 2020, Espoo Hospital received support for promoting art, culture and wellbeing from the City of Espoo’s well-being programme. The purpose of this project was to outline specific processes for the various wards, so that patients and employees would get used to regular activities and feel comfortable about participating in arts sessions. Artists with considerable experience in combining art and wellbeing were involved in the project. This eventually focused on one previously tried and tested activity and two pilot concepts: 1) the songdrawing method for psycho-geriatric and neurological patients; 2) a pilot of Music for Life by hospital musicians for patients on the infectious diseases ward and 3) a pilot of hospital clowns visiting adult patients on the wound care ward and the neurology ward.

Service centres can be found across the city, and the services they offer are principally free of charge. In 2019, about 13,500 Helsinki residents had a service centre card making
them eligible for the services offered. Clients come to the service centres independently or with a friend or family member. Some clients are referred to the service centres by partners such as health centres, home care or hospitals. Clients are free to come and go, to join groups and participate or not, as they choose. Many clients have come to regard the service centre as an extension of their homes, a meaningful community that they enjoy for many years. Within the service centre, clients can – according to changes in their functional capacity or life situation – move from one leisure activity group to another, perhaps to a peer support group for clients requiring more assistance
The service centres cater to the needs of a diverse clientele spanning a wide age range with both individual and collective cultural experiences, designed to provide special moments or to give an additional boost to everyday routines. Clients may attend talks, concerts, daytime dances and singalong events. There is also a wide range of hobby and study groups available, in areas as diverse as watercolour painting, ceramics, sewing, woodwork, metalwork, drama, etc. The service centres also offer cultural experiences for those who could not independently access them or who would not otherwise go. Arts-based and activity-based methods allow clients to enjoy their cultural rights even with diminished functional capacity due to a memory disorder or severe mobility or communication impairments

The Accessible Orchestras project coordinated in Finland by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in collaboration with the Association of Finnish Symphony Orchestras aims to
develop the work of orchestras with older people in Finland and Great Britain. In the UK, the project is coordinated by Orchestras Live in collaboration with the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland. The two-year project supports equal accessibility to culture and the arts by seeking ways of bringing orchestra activities closer to those among the older population who are unable to attend concerts in person. The aim is to promote a sense of community and the active inclusion of older people through art. In addition to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, other Finnish orchestras participating in the Accessible Orchestras project include the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta ‒ the orchestra of the City of Espoo, and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. The producers of these orchestras have convened during the 2020–21 season to pilot new ideas and share ideas with each other. Participating orchestras in the Accessible Orchestras project from the UK include the City of London Sinfonia and Manchester Camerata.

The Finnish National Theatre set up its Touring Stage in 2010. Its mission is to take performances and workshops to locations where people cannot otherwise easily access
live art. The Touring Stage performances and workshops can be booked for service centres for the elderly, in residential units for people with learning disabilities or people
recovering from mental illness or addiction; in hospitals; in prisons; or at immigration reception centres. It also produces documentary theatre projects, created in collaboration with marginalised communities. The Touring Stage aims to reinforce the relationship between the National Theatre and society at large, and with specific communities.

The work is rooted in the arts-based method developed over many years by the Maria Baric Company, using the visual nature of puppetry and the brain-activating properties of music. The purpose of this approach is to improve the well-being of older people who have memory disorders or are otherwise ill or functionally impaired through enhancing their agency, improving their quality of life and contributing to their social well-being. This model has been honed with nursing homes and hospital wards in various cities over a period of ten years, with financial support provided from, for example, the City of Helsinki, Arts Promotion Centre Taike, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Stea.

PERFARE “PERforming arts to promote social welfARE access in Europe” wants to innovate the creative models of the partners’ organisations to make Welfare services (i.e. health and well-being) an integral part of their artistic work. The project intends to facilitate the access to any performing art experiences for an elderly audience or groups with health issues. PERFARE directly addresses artists and operators of the Creative and Cultural sector and performing arts organizations in 5 different countries - namely Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Romania and Sweden. It also addresses their needs to innovate their creative models by exploring opportunities for the integration of artistic and cultural activities into the health and social care services provided by their national welfare systems. To reach these objectives, partners will be firstly involved in a capacity building process to foster their ability to work and cooperate with actors of their local welfare systems (those entitled to design and implement supporting policies/initiatives for their target groups as hospitals, mental health centres, nursing homes, etc.). To this end, partners will search and map success stories of such cooperation, they will share knowledge and capitalise tools already developed by other EU funded projects and they will participate in a tour of field visits across Europe, in order to gain a direct experience on how performing arts interventions can improve welfare services for people with health problems. Once built, the knowledge acquired at transnational level needs to be transferred into practice. To this end, the second project phase will be conceived as a real training ground where each partner will set up a cooperation/funding scheme with the stakeholders of its welfare system.
Thanks to this legally-embedded cooperation frameworks (i.e. through the signature of specific Memoranda of Understanding), calls for actions will be launched in each partner’s territory to fund artists and their innovative ideas to involve audience groups with health problems (for example artistic residences in oncologic hospital departments, arts workshops with elders and people affected by mental diseases, and so on). Finally, the selected artists will implement pilot actions that will be further evaluated by the project partners, to measure the impact achieved by the artistic interventions in supporting people with physical and/or mental health issues.

The Keneish Dance company has a programme entitled Arts Health in which they are providing holistic dance and movement sessions to the people whom need it most. Their practice is cross cultural and trauma informed, combining Afro Dances, Yoga and free form. Sessions are carefully planned for different ages, abilities and capabilities. They promote through dance better flexibility, alignment, cardio vascular health whilst relieving anxiety or tension in the mind. With breath guided movement that helps de – stress
participants can create balance and harmony within themselves and community.