Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

For many years Valeria have been helping her mental health through the creation of “therapeutic clothing”. In the spring of 2022, she left her "serious" business in Eastern Europe and moved to Portugal to realize her dream of creating therapeutic clothing. Now she is learning to allow herself to be a creative person, creating her own small creative business and telling other people about her path.
OUT – Outdoor atelier of Clothes for Mental Health is the project proposed by Valeria in which she creates clothes for other in order to support them to express their feelings and to overcome the negative feelings. The clothes are handcrafted and created in a unique atmosphere: near the ocean, in the mountains, in the forest, on the street, usually OUTdoor places that can make the clothes more inspiring for the people.

The coronavirus pandemic has significantly restricted not only the working conditions of musicians and other performing artists, but also the possibilities of bringing art to different customer groups in need of care and rehabilitation who, due to their state of health or location, cannot access art activities and culture. However, the Act on Cultural Activities in Local Government (166/2019) contains provisions on equal access to and promotion of culture and the arts as a part of residents' well-being and health.
The project aims at bringing the well-being impacts of music as part of the daily life in health care by utilising digitalisation. Multiprofessional collaboration in music and health care are being promoted by developing digital operating models in which music and health care professionals work together to promote well-being.
The project creates a platform for music professionals to target digital music products and services to different customer groups. Health care professionals, on the other hand, can use these products and services in their work and contact music professionals for multiprofessional collaboration. The project also tests and pilot the free MuPsych mobile application that can track mental states during music listening as a therapy tool. MuPsych application allows the therapist to get real information about the customer's music listening, which helps guide the customer's music listening to a direction that bolsters mood. Further, Resonance Frequency Breathing (RFB) - slow breathing exercises which have been successfully used to enhance outcomes of music therapy - and music composed to guide these exercises is tested and piloted in the project. In addition, other digital music tools suitable for relaxation and emotional work are mapped, tested and piloted.
Digital music services, methods and tools are tested together with music and health care professionals and students and piloted in real life health care contexts. As a result of the project, digital music products, methods and tools that renew health care are introduced, and health care and music professionals are educated to use them. The project aims to reform health care practices, improve the digital skills of music and health care professionals, and promote equal access to the arts and the employment of music professionals in the health care sector.

Heritage management institution, local arts initiative, urban gardening community and passionate heritage volunteers working together to change the abandoned First World War heritage site to a resilient community hub in harmony with nature and history. Largely based on voluntary effort and with limited funds, this has been a long, open co-creation process which has led to a unique place for arts and culture, biodiversity and community urban gardening with sustainability at heart.
"Kaunas Fort no. 8" is an ongoing reinvention effort within the city of Kaunas to develop Fortress No.8 based on the principles of sustainability seeking synergy among community, nature and history. Fortress No.8 is part of the city wide, circular network of fortifications where artificial reliefs and underground structures are dominant. “Resilient Fortress of Community” created inclusive cultural spaces in Fortress No. 8 and around for the inhabitants that have been slowly separated by socio-economical reasons from the city’s cultural life.
Artists’ residencies that invited international artists to reside with families from the community in the same apartment buildings were a bridge for crossing cultural boundaries, and creating exposure to diverse thoughts and cultures. Moreover, cultural performances and gatherings not only strengthened already existing culture such as community celebrations but also introduced inhabitants to less familiar contemporary art and culture.
Fortress No. 8 became a site for both climate and cultural activism. The collectivity of the neighborhood was expressed through collaboration with artists, conversations, and the growing ownership of the space. Neighbors were involved, engaged and became the artists themselves. The co-creators of the community hub continue to provide activities that educate, while weaving a historical relation to the place. Excursions and heritage caretaking builds a strong connection to the location as well as the nation’s history.

Our 1 in 10 Project is a theatrical residency for schools and colleges, provides high-quality, focused, drama-based interventions for young people (9-18 years) to explore mental health, increase understanding and encourage positive well-being. Delivered by a theatre director, students have one day to create an 8-10 minute devised performance around a mental health topic they have chosen. Schools choose up to 25 students per day to take part, in consultation with the safeguarding lead and heads of year. Since the project started in 2018, Fluid Motion Theatre Company have worked in nine secondary schools and two primary schools and engaged with around 1,400 young people.

The title of the project is “Travel in time and space - an art walk on Nacka hospital". The purpose of the art walks is to help the art of stimulating the health of the patient to thereby increasing the experience of health. The patients on the wards are usually aged 50–80 years and usually stays around one to 30 days. The project wants to take advantage of and make art visible as a resource in the staff's work with the wards' patients and stimulate social interaction between patients, between patients and staff and between patients and relatives visiting. Another goal is to generate experience as other care activities may benefit from similar future initiatives. The the overall goal is thus to raise patients' quality of life by integrating art into care and the care work.

The ATe is a non-profit professional association whose main objectives are to regulate the practice and training of art therapy and to help consolidate and officially recognize the profession in Spain.
Art Therapy made by volunteers from ATe is a therapeutic framework and the methodology which mainly used on art therapy theory, group analytic psychotherapy, dynamic psychotherapies and contemporary art theory. As a general rule, ""Art Therapy"" is indicated for people who, due to their circumstances or the disease they suffer, find it difficult to verbally articulate their conflicts and emotions.
Methodology: 36 individual sessions spaced once a week and lasting one hour over almost a year. J's process is structured from the plastic point of view of his work, which speaks to us from the first moment about creations with a direct connection to the expression of his emotions. In principle, the use of color in his drawings and the decoration of ceramic pieces are linked to the symbolization of emotions, as is the expressive way of using charcoal and clay, which is also connected to the expression and meaning of the same, especially anger and fear. To show this process, J's plastic work is classified into 4 phases: phase 1: exploratory and expressive, phase 2 of recognition and materialization, phase 3 of understanding and containment, and phase 4 of acceptance and reception.

Opera North’s commission for this year’s PRSF New Music Biennial, The Crossing is woven from improvised exchanges between the four artists and is described by Roopa as “a movement from loss to renewal”.
Inspired by traditional Hindustani baithak concerts, the close proximity of musicians and audience influences the direction of each performance, offering a space in which to contemplate and respond to music after the disruption and tumult of the last two years. Roopa’s sitar, Al’s piano and Gurdain’s tabla weave together within a framework of traditional Indian raags, as Camilo’s electronics multiply and knit together the sounds of the three instruments. Part of the Howard Assembly Room’s Wellbeing Weekend.
An Opera North commission for the New Music Biennial 2022, presented by the PRS Foundation in partnership with Coventry UK City of Culture, BBC Radio 3 and NMC Recordings with support from Arts Council of England, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Culture Gävleborg's activities in music and dance offer in collaboration with municipalities the concept "Balcony concerts" where musicians / dancers come to nursing homes and perform outside their balcony. During the pandemic period, it has been a successful concept and we also see a continuation of this project in the future.

Famous and internationally awarded Polish actress Ms. Krystyna Janda played an experienced psychotherapy supervisor in the Polish edition of the well-known global series In Treatment (HBO) — bringing the complexity of psychotherapists' work and the standards of this demanding profession closer to a wide audience. The art of acting can perfectly disenchant the image of professional psychotherapy in a country marked by misunderstanding of even the concept of mental health.
Now the same voice of Krystyna Janda does a lot of good to destigmatize depression in Poland in a film premiered by the Warsaw #AllianceAgainstDepression. From the very beginning, one of the allies of the first Polish local alliance created in Warsaw Capital City Center according to the EU and WHO best practice standard has been locally prominent Teatr Polonia, where Ms. Janda is the artistic director. Similar alliances are being established in other capital cities: Athens and Sofia. In Germany, there are already more than eighty. In familiar voices, they speak locally about depression as a real disease that can affect anyone and can be effectively treated.
The animated video from Warsaw was created for public use within European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) Third Health Programme's EAAD-Best. Together with Marta Smagowicz they proceeded the local partnership and borrowed some informal know how from as always friendly Radio TOK FM.

Taikusydän is the Arts & Health Coordination Centre in Finland. Taikusydän is a multisectoral coordination centre and national network for arts, culture and well-being in Finland. They work towards connecting the people working across this growing and diverse field. The objective of Taikusydän is to make arts and culture a permanent part of well-being services and health and well-being promotion in Finland. Taikusydän operates nationally through 14 regional networks in the area of 16 counties. Taikusydän is administrated by Turku University of Applied Sciences. The coordination centre is projectbased and it has been active since 2015.
The main activities of Taikusydän:
1) They communicate and deliver information on research, projects, funding, policy development, events, publications, and education, and publish a monthly newsletter with 1200 subscribers (in Finnish). They are also active on social media. They have 15 000 website visitors every year.
2) In their website they compile a databank gathering information about publications, practices, research (including international research), projects, concepts, education, and operational models in Finland.
3) Taikusydän acts as a development partner in various projects and working and steering groups, organizes seminars and workshops, gives lectures and webinars about arts & health. In 2021 they took part in 50 events and reached nearly 4000 participants.
4) Taikusydän coordinates a national network of researchers, fosters interdisciplinary discussions, and disseminates information about the arts & health research. This has been extremely important.
5) Taikusydän operates nationally through 14 regional networks in 16 counties.
6) Taikusydän influences decision-making and creates greater understanding of how to support wellbeing, inclusion, health and learning through the arts.
The activities are also the results of the project, that has already been going and funded for seven years. They have created a functional model for national networking, dissemination of knowledge and collaboration in the arts & health field in Finland.