Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Give a Book works in a practical and targeted way, project by project, to help spread the pleasure of reading. The team promotes books and the pleasure of reading in the hardest to reach places. Their core belief is that to pass on a good read – to give a book – is a transaction of lasting worth. They work in prisons, schools and with disadvantaged children and young people throughout the UK.

The League of Wheelchair Users operates the BARKA Theatre as one of its activities supporting the independent life of people with disabilities, as a space for artistic, leisure and integration activities of people with disabilities. It is home to 6 permanently active integrated groups (blind, people with physical, mental and combined disabilities), as well as more than 40 regular amateur, semi-professional, dance and drama groups and special cultural projects. There are dozens of regular festivals of student and foreign language theatre and other artistic projects - for example, integration morning performances for school groups supporting the process of inclusion, screenings, benefit concerts, suburban integration theatre camps, etc. The FEST IN festival of integrated art presents the activities of integrated groups. This gives people with disabilities the opportunity to participate in regular artistic activities, which are often equal in quality to professional performances. Of course, this is also connected with self-development, community sharing and support, and social inclusion. BARKA Theatre is also a workplace that offers employment to people with mental and physical disabilities in associated artistic professions (stage technician, cleaning, bar/box office operation, etc.)

Arts and Minds uses the arts to help people living with mental health challenges. Their programmes are diverse and include: 1) Arts on prescription - the arts workshops are friendly and inclusive spaces for adults over the age of 18 who are experiencing mental health challenges, including anxiety and depression. Led by a professional artist and a qualified counsellor, they offer the chance to explore working with a wide range of materials and techniques, including drawing, printmaking and sculpture. They run Arts on Prescription programmes in Cambridge, St Ives and Peterborough; 2) Michaelhouse Singers - is a welcoming community choir open to anybody with a mental health condition and their carers and friends. Young people over 12 years are welcome to attend with an accompanying adult and the gatherings are weekly at the Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge; 3) Pottery for younger people with dementia - this programme provides a safe and therapeutic environment for participants diagnosed with dementia early in life.
Sessions allow attendees to show ability and enjoy success within a safe and social setting, experience handling clay and be guided and supported to make objects which will then be glazed and professionally fired. 4) Creative break - art sessions for corporate clients and other organisations committed to supporting the mental wellbeing of their employees.

The Mime Troupe proposed using its well established play-creation workshop process to help participants from three constituencies - incarcerated felons, low-income youth, and migrant workers in California’s Central Valley region - to identify and voice what health means in their communities and cultural contexts. They assisted each constituency in developing its own short piece to be performed and then incorporated language and themes from these three original short pieces into a larger single production to be performed for the respective constituencies as well as for a larger San Francisco audience. Through this project, SFMT proposed to amplify these constituencies’ voices and bring new perspectives into the discussion around making health a shared value.

As a counterpoint to commonplace attitudes that promote a climate of silence and stigma around incarceration, Voices aimed to nurture a culture of community health and well-being by promoting acceptance, belonging, and dialogue. Incarcerated participants were invited to share their stories through writing, drawing, performance, and other forms of creative expression, promoting awareness beyond prison walls while cultivating dialogue built on mutual respect and dignity.
Following film screenings, panel discussions, a symposium, and a widely-watched livestream event at SCI Graterford, the project culminated in a mural designed by formerly incarcerated artist Jesse Krimes, installed at the State Department of Corrections Community Corrections Center. Krimes developed the design through intensive workshops with Voices participants, encouraging them to share their personal experiences and relate them to broader issues of incarceration, reentry, and community relations. The large-scale brick wall in the mural is partially concealed by peeling paint, with imagery and words revealed where the paint peels away, sharing messages of humanity and resilience. The crooked tree and its chained, straightened shadow are a nod to the parable of the crooked tree, symbolizing participants’ personal growth and ability to flourish in spite, or because of, unexpected life turns.

Creativity gives us the ability to reimagine the world around us, and the criminal justice system is no exception. The individuals directly impacted by our criminal justice system are best positioned to lead conversations and to find solutions to the problem of overincarceration. Launched in 2017, the Reimagining Reentry Fellowship funds selected artists impacted by the justice system to examine the problems posed by mass incarceration on both a personal and a systemic level, illuminating the human cost and potential solutions.

The Lowe Art Museum is exploring the intersection of the arts, health, and well-being through a series of programs and University of Miami research initiatives. Their programs and research integrate art forms to a variety of healthcare and community settings for therapeutic, educational, professional development, and creative purposes. Some of the programs implemented by them are: 1) Mindfulness program represents weekly mindfulness sessions online, in which the participants are spending time with one work of art from the Lowe's collection and enjoying a guided mindful looking exercise led by the Lowe Art Museum Education staff. Each session is lasting about 30 minutes followed by a Q & A; 2) Fine Art of Heath Care is a nationally recognized inter-professional program for students and professionals in Medicine, Nursing, Physical Therapy, and Mental Health. Using art and discussion as tools with the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) methodology, participants fine-tune their observational, analytical, and communication skills, all of which are important in clinical settings. They also learn about self-care, as they are encouraged to slow down and unwind in the Lowe's galleries; and 3) General Resources for Museums, Art + Health + Well-being.

The project Music and Health, promotes an idea of culture and art as elements that harmony to life, and believes that musical art, in particular, has the ability to support and include particularly fragile and disadvantaged categories. Born in 2017, the project is divided into musical communication workshops, dedicated to patients and their families, who participate, expressing their creativity and their potential. They feel recognized and accepted individually and in their community. The workshops represent an opportunity for aggregation and cultural enjoyment accessible and close to individual's needs. The project also aims to support the study, research and constant training of professionals specialized in the use of musical art for therapeutic purposes.
The aim is to develop new methods and methods of study in the field of health and pathology, embracing an increasingly wide social and cultural context; generate empathy by fostering interpersonal relationships in hospital and socio-health contexts; study and application of strategies necessary for the realization of musical laboratories addressed to a wide spectrum of pathologies; a path of experimentation and research, with the aim of defining new methods of collaboration between art and science, starting from the affinities of objectives, survey/work methods and diversity of approach.

The "Experimental Laboratory of Knowledge and Valorisation of Cultural Heritage in the Giaveno area" is being developed as part of the Drawing and History of Art lessons at the IIS Pascal of Giaveno in the 2021/2022 school year and is being implemented in the meeting and collaboration with the City of Giaveno. The initiative, designed and developed by Professor Emanuela Gasca, in fact, was realised with the students of the High School of Applied Sciences. The project was specifically born as an initiative in response to the health emergency and in particular the resulting fragilities inherent in the difficulties of creating physical relations and moments of aggregation in the area.
The Inspiring Values: Culture, Well-being and Community
The initiative embraces the values of the European Year of Young People 2022 by proposing an approach that not only places young people at the centre of the policies, but also makes them protagonists in the design of projects developed on their territory. Furthermore, looking at the cultural dimensions of the European Year of Heritage and the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the project revolves around the keywords of "innovation" and "well-being": in this respect, cultural heritage becomes the flywheel of possible sustainable development processes towards actions for the preservation, protection and dissemination of tangible and intangible heritage, a fundamental contributor to the creation of inclusive, welcoming, resilient cities and territories. In response to these dimensions, the Laboratory was also reported among the projects developed in the European Year of Youth on the official platform of this European initiative.
Objectives and final output: The Web Portal and the Cultural Heritage Files
The Laboratory aims to create, on the one hand, a system of knowledge and values that develop the students' sense of belonging to the territory in which their school is located and, on the other hand, relationships, moments of aggregation and development of a cultural community around cultural heritage, as an element of well-being and quality of life in response to the pandemic moment.
The end result of the Laboratory was in fact the creation of a web portal where the students shared the tourist itineraries they had created. Within this framework, the site also offers a narrative of the heritage linked to these routes through dedicated sheets, shared through historical characteristics, elements of curiosity and specifics of fruition, which have been interpreted and communicated through students unprecedented outlook.

Libraries on Prescription programme will engage with more than 30 Libraries and 200 Library and PSS professionals in Greece over a period of 24 months to change the way they work and increase their organisations’ impact, resilience and sustainability.
The organisers aim to connect the health and creative sector through a collaborative approach, in order to design a system that is more collaborative, open, innovative and people-centred and remove stigma around mental health particularly in rural communities. In this respect, they aim to define a social prescribing program for people who have long-term health problems, complex social needs, and mental health challenges.

Objectives:
• Reach and support the whole community regardless of age, gender, socio-economic status or educational attainment.
• Create a Culture of Caring
• Provide space where groups can come together and enjoy activities that are co-designed with local people, to meet their needs.
• Offer local health support services available through ‘community hubs’, bringing together different partners’ offerings in a seamless way.
• Create safe, welcoming and accessible physical and virtual environments freely open to all, which encourage participation, creativity and mutual learning and support.
• Help local government and its partners deliver their strategic objectives, whether linked to community cohesion, health and wellbeing, economic growth, promoting independent living or increasing life chances.

Athens Comics Library will be working in partnership with E.P.A.P.S.Y. aiming to offer an alternative model of psychosocial care to the community based on the principles of Social Psychiatry and Psychosocial Rehabilitation.

For Libraries on Prescription the organisers have selected 4 Libraries across Greece:

1) Patras University Library - target group: young people, students

2) Psychiko Municipality, Athens, Public Library of Organisation for Solidarity, Culture and Sports - target group: people with learning difficulties

3) Rapsani Municipality, Larissa, Public Library - target group: elderly women in rural Greece

4) Ayia, Crete, Prison Library - target group: prisoners

Athens Comics Library will first pilot the Programme working together with Refugee Week Greece, designing and delivering a Programme of "Stand Up Comedy" and storytelling for refugees, migrants and asylum seekers facing mental health challenges.

Through the Programme organisers will ignite the creation of a Libraries of Sanctuary network - a network of librarians, library staff, community groups and book lovers. We will monitor together with E.P.A.P.S.Y. closely the well-being and mental health of all participants including the staff team.