Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

The Roda Gigante clown group does regular visits in hospitals, twice a week for 10 months a year, in an artistic intervention that promote the child's joy, autonomy and independence whilst humanizing the relationships between the artist and the patients. Lastly the activity of the group is all about make a relaxing environment and breaking protocols and hierarchies.

(Re)stop was a temporary action, carried out in 2019-2020 which entailed the humanization of health spaces through the articulation of different fields of art: literature, visual arts and architecture. The project also aimed to activate and transform one of the non-interactive collective spaces of the Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital of UFRJ (HUCFF-UFRJ), located in Cidade Universitária, Rio de Janeiro. The project sought, through a low-cost and short-term intervention, to impact the place in order to promote reflections on the role of art in the humanization of care, as a counterpoint to the speed and indifference of everyday life, awakening sensitivity and the personal engagement of students and health professionals who attend the site.

The Municipality of São Paulo, through the Municipal Department of Culture, announced a special program between August and September with various artistic interventions that reflected on Covid-19 pandemic that was affecting the country and the world. They are artistic interventions, some of a scenographic nature, designed to be appreciated by pedestrians, car passengers and public transport and residents of buildings in the surroundings where they were held. The idea was that the proposals work as instruments of sociocultural transformations that ensure the defense of the lives and memory of those who are gone, in addition to empathize with those who lost loved ones during the pandemic. These are projects that also operate as part of public health policies, as they open a dialogue about local, cultural and social contexts, with aesthetic and socially disruptive actions in the urban fabric of the city, making art and culture antidotes for the 21st century.

With the support of Instituto Usiminas, the units of Ipatinga and Itatiaiucu in Minas Gerais and Cubatao in Baixada Santista received local artists who interacted with teams of workers in order to reinforce, in a relaxed way, the messages of attention and care. In the interventions the artists addressed information about the importance of following the health guidelines, including the use of the mask, social distancing, restrictions on agglomerations, hygiene of hands and personal objects and respect for guidelines in restaurants.

The general objective of this learning mobility project was to encourage and contribute to resilience paths that involve young people and society, triggering, through art and theater, a collective process of reworking and re-appropriating the experience linked to Covid-19, both on an individual and community scale, placing at the center the experience of the most disadvantaged and least listened to, elderly and young people, and promoting the human value and the historical and popular memory heritage of the former and the resources, the potential, the spirit of initiative and the willingness to participate in the social life of the latter. 1. Theatrical workshop on the themes of encountering the other, knowing and listening to oneself and sharing emotions and images about confinement.
2. Recovery and enhancement of stories and testimonies of the territory, through a workshop of interviews and audio editing in which the voices of the inhabitants of the country will be recorded and then reworked into artistic products.
3. Art therapy laboratory
4. Manual workshop for the construction of masks
5. Yoga and meditation in nature
6. Non-formal education activities and games on the topics: multiculturalism and multilingualism, teamwork and cooperation, social roles and active citizenship.

MailArt4Seniors aims to create an innovative educational package that will give seniors the tools they need to fight isolation and ensure their personal well-being, maintain their social life and enjoy a quality daily living in the COVID-19 era. The tools will be set out as effective support for adult education trainers to plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate their training strategies in addressing the challenges seniors face in their daily life though the means of art. Mail art has been around for many decades. It’s not a particularly new idea, but in this time of people’s isolation due to the pandemic, it felt very important to revive it and utilize it as an artistic means of expression. Especially seniors who intensively experience social distancing, will be given the opportunity through mail art as a safe mode of communal creativity, to express and share - with their family members, friends and colleagues - feelings, thoughts, emotions, and ideas in an artistic, imaginative, motivating and most importantly safe, for their health, way since distance will be maintained, but loneliness and isolation will be fought.

Music Community is a project that explores possibilities of making a more efficient use of music in non formal education for young people, focusing on digitization as an essential trend and tool and on values such as social inclusion and environmental friendliness. The project also relies on the implication and modern vision of young people who are studying in the field of music and arts. As a response to the problem of the alienation of young people in these difficult times of the pandemic, the project consortium develop several instruments to be used in non-formal education. These instruments are: a collaborative platform for young people, an online manual for community based education on Music as a toll to overcome anxiety and an application for youth workers mixing music with other arts and a holistic artistic education MOOC. One of the objectives is to foster well-being through music among 80 beneficiaries of the project (participating in a blended mobility or in testing activities for the IOs), over the course of 24 months.

HEART is an Erasmus+ KA2 project to increase the quality of adult education and training by developing adult educators competences, awareness and knowledge linked to work engagement using a new training method - the synergy of outdoor experiential education and art methodologies- and by creating a more committed, engaging and professional environment inside their organisations. The burnout within helping professions – including educators – has been known since decades, and by now a solid research and practical intervention basis exists linked to it. However, burnout continues to be a severe issue until today. Educators, their organisations and managers lack knowledge and awareness of the burnout syndrome and its potential prevention techniques. Timely interventions are essential to prevent burnout, otherwise its later stages would involve physical, emotional and mental exhaustion from which it is difficult to recover. To tackle above issues, a transnational partnership composed of 6 partners from 5 countries developed the HEART project. HEART innovative methodology is based on transnational, holistic and positive approach and creates a synergy between outdoor experiential education and artistic methods.

Gigging-4-Living is working to support performing artists – musicians, dancers, and actors – to develop their business skills so that they can build successful and sustainable careers in the creative sector – making use of the multitude of digital platforms that can support their career in a post-pandemic economy. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, performing artists have been negatively and disproportionately impacted by the lockdowns and restrictions across Europe. Unable to perform, and to make a living, this has negatively impacted their mental health and wellbeing. As such, Gigging-4-Living also supports performing artists to protect and maintain their sense of well-being in a post-pandemic economy. Gigging-4-Living partners will develop a suite of unique resources dedicated to supporting performing artists to innovate and transform their art form into a model that can survive in a pandemic disturbed society while simultaneously building the resilience to the threat of mental health stressors. GIGGING-4-Living will provide a toolkit of resources that focuses on building resilience to promote positive mental health within the performing arts sector. The 4 modules will address issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness and self-confidence.

The general aim of the project “SPARKS for special needs” is to facilitate a cross-cultural research and exchange about self-directed learning in the specific frame of special needs. We intend to involve in this process disabled adults and families, as well as professionals, therapists and educators in the field of care. The main focus is on Somatic Education – especially Body-Mind Centering (BMC) - as an innovative approach to bodily self-awareness and community-based learning, which provides educational resources for enhancing and empowering the experiential knowledge of individuals and communities. In this project, BMC functions as a model and vector for the formal/informal production of knowledge that draw from traditional therapies, neuroscience, developmental psychology and clinical research, as well as body-based practices, dance, performing arts and other creative processes.