Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

To ensure the quality of life of its older people and their independence, Naas (IE) developed an alternative model to the institutional residential care one. McAuley Place is a non-medical, intergenerational and not-for-profit housing association located in the city centre, its 53 apartments are allocated both socially and privately to 60 people. McAuley Place aims at bringing older people to the heart of the vibrant Naas community. Activities such as the popular Arts and Crafts programme, by attracting inhabitants of all age, ensure the social inclusion and integration of the tenants. Since 2008, McAuley has been providing an environment in which all stakeholders, residents, workers and volunteers (often students), can connect. McAuley offers a model of sustainable urban living, with a town centre location and a mixed-use campus, where culture operates as a critical platform, accessible to both resident and visitor alike. The high levels of participation in the Arts and Crafts programme reflect the critical importance of creativity, and help build a culture of social contact. The project demonstrates an inter-disciplinary and inter-sectoral approach embedded in a campus where the mix of residential, Arts Hub, community centre, restored garden and tea rooms creates the kind of rich ecology which produces daily minor miracles, and sustains mental health and human existence.

The main mission of the Art4Me project is to promote mental health through art therapy to adults with mental health problems and highlight the importance of mental health promotion by visual arts, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of millions of Europeans living with psychiatric disorders. The aim is to exchange good practices in managing successful mental health awareness campaigns such as the use of art in mental health festivals. There will be a a training entitled "Reducing stigma and discrimination of adults with mental illness and facilitating their social inclusion with the use of art" (July 2022), a meeting in Lisbon (October 2022) and a final meeting at the office of the European Parliament in Athens (February 2023). During the project, the project will examine the situation in each partner country (Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy and Portugal) concerning the use of art therapy and the use of art in mental health promotion. Two festivals will be organised on the occasion of world mental health day in October 2021 and October 2022. People with mental health problems from Italy, Croatia, Portugal and Greece will be involved in the project during the physical or virtual focus groups.

The main goal of the project is the creation of a film document - Mirror Of The Soul, which will be used as a methodological material and will help young people, youth leaders and youth workers to manage stressful situations. To create a space for educating young people through audiovisual technology (film). The partial goals are to reflect on how young people perceive the current situation (limited movement, distance education, lack of social contacts) associated with Covid-19, how the state supports young people in the field of mental health. And also to support the development of key competences for film processing, to improve the quality of non-formal education of young people in the field of mental health.

The main objective is to reach the largest number of people to whom to offer activities conceived and designed to counteract loneliness, promote socialization and well-being, to regain confidence and will to live. The main expected result is to create well-being among the people who decide to get involved in the planned activities, which we can translate into pleasure, commitment and awareness in what is being done. The planned activities concern various cultural and artistic sectors. There are contemporary dance workshops which, in addition to providing various benefits to the body and mind, are able to promote socialization and interrelationships; all this, with the help of professional dancers and making use of informal settings, can become a "cure" in the sense that the experts will take care of the participants through supervision, concern and attention towards them. Interactive music workshops will also be set up using any disused object or material being able to produce a sound.

ARTY brings together actors from the fields of mental health, youth work, non-formal education, arts and culture. The aim is to extend the competences of youth workers, psychologists, social workers and practitioners in Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Romania, who work with vulnerable youth with developing or existing mental health conditions, in order to be able to offer continuous support to their beneficiaries, even during lockdowns and quarantine situations, by utilizing digital art therapy. The project is complementary to the actions carried out across the EU to implement the EU Joint Action on Mental Health and Wellbeing. Also, the ARTY project promotes the mainstreaming of SDG3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. ARTY will implement the following activities:
1. Guide for CSOs and relevant professionals (i. e. youth workers, psychologists, social workers and practitioners) to implement art therapy sessions for youth with psychological disorders online.
2. Capacity Building program for youth workers, psychologists, social workers and practitioners to foster target groups’ ability to enhance youth mental wellbeing and to empower youth to deal with the challenges imposed by the pandemic.
3. Awareness Raising Toolkit for CSOs on the impact of COVID-19 to youth with developing or existing mental health conditions.

The project will promote art-therapy among hospitalized patients with special attention to senior citizens, considering that art-therapy and creativity actions in general are preventive measures against mental deterioration. The goals are:
- to increase creativity in hospitalized patients with special attention to senior citizens;
- to favour the communication, motivation and social support of family members toward senior citizens;
- to improve the quality of life of isolated and hospitalized patients through the social support and improving their competences.
The project will reach these goals through the creation of the following 3 intellectual outputs, translated into 6 languages (EN, IT, FR, SP, NL, RO):
1. The Guide of Art Therapy for Covid-19 patients : a 200 pages guide supporting senior citizens, hospitalized patients and other people in quarantine in developing skills of art-therapy to improve their psychological wellbeing during the isolation. This manual will be a valid support for all patients in developing skills of creativity and adult educators to create dedicated educational programmes for increasing creativity in hospitalized patients.
2. E-learning platform Art Therapy for senior citizens in Covid-19 isolation: a 6 module online training piloted and tailored on the needs of senior citizens which will show through video lectures how to perform art therapy in isolation. This intellectual output will be highly tailored to be adapted also to patients which are unfamiliar with digital technologies through a dedicated piloting session among 90 participants.
3. Motivational App for Psychological Support, Creativity and Artworks Production for hospitalized patients: an App which allow senior citizens and hospitalized patients to be supported by family members, to upload artworks and do peer support with other patients worldwide. This support and motivational network based on art will improve the quality of life of users.

The partners in this project will exchange knowledge regarding Good practices and Tools with an artistic and educational dimension, in order to enrich the educational "briefcases" of Adult educators and to promote positive well-being, and ease the negative psychological aspects arisen from the pandemic. The target group of the Project is Adult Educators working with Adult Learners who have been affected mentally and emotionally by the pandemic and seek support, due to the discomfort and negative emotions caused by it. Those Adult Educators will participate in all the project's activities, in order to then implement the knowledge, they have acquired to the end-users, the people with fragile mental health.
OBJECTIVES:
1. Enhance Adult Educators' knowledge and awareness about creative and artistic tools/methods to be used in Adult Education
2. Meliorate the professional skills and competences of Adult Educators working with Adult Learners
3. Improve the mental health and well-being of the end-users, which was worsened due to the lockdown and the uncertainty of the situation we currently experience
4. Enhance the Learners' soft skills via art
5. Raise awareness about mental health and the significance of well-being
6. Exchange of Good practices and Tools concerning artistic initiatives around mental health with an educational dimension.

The Inclusive Memory project aims at promoting the building of a common shared social memory realised through a museum based social inclusive system, through the link Art-Health-Wellbeing. It is based on the concept which sees museums as teaching and learning environments, and Universities as active social actors, both strengthening their role of cultural integration facilitators. The core idea of the project stems from the potential benefits of the cooperation between HEIs, Health and Social care Institutions and Museums, as a strategic partnership to advance in museum education as well as in museum experience in order to support the design, realization, monitoring and evaluation of art-based activities and actions specifically addressed to people with social care and health problems.

The objective was to develop curricula for a study programme, which will train artists and health workers with an arts background to work with social inclusion in their artistic projects. The goal is to introduce them to art’s abilities to make connections, facilitate well-being, empowerment and strengthen self-confidence. Emphasises will be on training flexible and sensitive artists, capable of relating to advanced ideas and finding new roles in the constant changing society. The project consisted of several activities over a two-year period, offering a collaborative learning community for all art disciplines, with the active participation of academics and students in the field of arts and therapy, and healthcare specialists. Enhancement of personal skills, self-confidence, community engagement, collaboration skills and reflective practice was central elements of all activities. They were in the form of two intensive programmes and a staff development seminar, focusing on reaching out to people suffering the Alzheimer disease and youth at risk of dropping out of school.

The implementation of this project will contribute to eliminating the problems of marginalized groups (people with disabilities, seniors, migrants) and their social exclusion, and help them improve their key competences. These people, sometimes with problems of an emotional or psychological nature, often only by various art forms (music, art, dance, theatre) are able to open up. Art opens access to our interior: emotions, needs, fears. This is especially important in the times of the pandemic that all of Europe is currently struggling with. The pandemic seriously hindered this part of society both in terms of access to culture and art, as well as active participation in its creation. Counteracting the effects of these difficulties is therefore particularly important now. The project will train educators working with groups at risk of marginalization, so that they can show their students the way to active and creative participation in culture and art, and thus improve their position in society, including the labour market. The aim of the project is to develop cooperation and exchange of experiences of educators for the creative activity of the above-mentioned people at risk of exclusion, as well as to raise and expand the professional qualifications of people working with them; disseminating art therapy methods of work; increasing digital competences among staff working with people from communities at risk of marginalization and people working for the above-mentioned environments, as well as increasing the opportunities for individual development of educators and volunteers cooperating with partner organizations; obtaining new and improving the psychological, interpersonal and methodological skills necessary in working with people at risk of exclusion. The aforementioned groups will be participants of workshops and demonstrations of methods of work.