Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Believe in Art is a project that combines art and health to humanize hospital environments. Through the Believe in art organization, born in 2013, numerous artists have made artistic interventions in hospital rooms, waiting rooms and other facilities, to improve the well-being of those who pass by and, in addition, open these spaces to society. The team decorated the spaces of several hospitals from Spain: Miguel Servet Maternal and Child Hospital; Lozano Blesa University Clinic; Royo Villanova in Zaragoza; San Jorge Hospital in Huesca; Hospital of Alcañiz. They focus mainly on health centers, although they have also intervened in some areas of the Juvenile Court of Zaragoza.

Within the framework of the palliative measures adopted by the Government of Canelones, the Directorate of Culture transforms the waiting rooms of the vaccination centers into exhibition halls. The interventions are carried out through photographic samples and texts by different Canarian artists. The artists registered through an electronic form that allowed them to have a survey and generate an artistic-cultural proposal according to the expertise of each one. Thus, people who go to the vaccination centers had the possibility to enjoy various images and texts and to empathize with the stories behind the cultural content. Alejandra and Guillermo are photographers for Las Piedras and Parque del Plata and both participated in the initiative, by immersing the participants through their images into the historical commercial past of Pedrense and in Frida Kahlo's live.

With the aim of making the vaccination process against Covid-19 more friendly to the children of Puerto Montt, the Municipal Health Directorate in alliance with the Cultural Corporation of the regional capital, took to the Puerto Montt Arena a playful artistic intervention to entertain the infants who have arrived there to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. In this context, five theater and performing arts artists arrived at the largest vaccination center in the Los Lagos region, who characterized as mimes and clowns, had the mission of accompanying children from 6 to 11 years old who were being inoculated.

The Municipality of Córdoba, through the Department of Culture, carried out a series of artistic interventions in the Covid-19 vaccination centers of the city. The initiative aimed to pay deserved recognition and gratitude to the health personnel who were fighting a hard battle in the pandemic context and to liven up, through art, the stay of the people who come to receive the inoculation. These activities proposed by the Municipality of Córdoba, are framed in public policies implemented by the government of Martín Llaryora, to promote the meeting of neighbors with cultural production.

The Navarro Youth Institute launched an open call addressed to artists between 18 and 30 years old to create a mural piece at the University Hospital of Navarra. The artistic intervention will materialize in this edition on a wall 3.10m high and 58.60m long in the psychiatry ward of the hospital. The objective is to create a space that humanizes all the people who share it: professionals, patients, family members, friends. The artistic projects will be aimed at helping to manage emotions in hospitals, facilitating the management of emotions, mediating in conflicts, and bringing out serenity in emotionally charged situations that occur in the hospital. The project entitled "Their Feelings" by the artist Diego Blanco Prieto was the one selected to be implemented and the project will reflect the different states of mind of patients, professionals, family members and friends through a single universal language: color. The artist aspires to start a dialogue with the all the beneficiaries and to involve them in the design phase. The Navarro Youth Institute will pay the artist or artists up to €5,650 for the production and execution of the artistic work in the Hospital Center space.

With the aim of generating citizen awareness about individual and community care to prevent the spread of Covid-19 was carried out the Art to generate awareness intervention, a proposal of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport in conjunction with the Municipality of San Carlos de Bariloche. On this occasion, the artists, who were selected through a call promoted through the Rio Negro Más Cultura program, made three interventions at the Emmaus Fair. In three different time slots, the interventions of David Ávila (puppets), Kike Braunstein and Paulino Carbajo, all designed for a family audience, were showcased. Through this initiative, the provincial Department of Culture in Bariloche seek to provide messages of awareness and prevention in a fun and original way through art and entertainment, while contributing to the economic and social reactivation of the cultural sector affected by the health emergency. Art to generate awareness is part of the different proposals promoted by the Government of Río Negro for the social and economic reactivation of the provincial cultural sector that was affected by the health Covid-19 emergency.

The Ministry of Health in a joint effort with the Social Service Division and the Culture Department of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, carried out an artistic intervention in the MotorTest of the Parque de Mayo. With the aim of preventing people from feeling afraid at the time of being swabbed, also to generate a positive climate and improve the mood of those people who are going to be swabbed, there were organized artistic interventions which added greater empathy to the spaces and also useful information on the sanitary protocol. The distress caused by swab test time was decreased through street entertainment and those in charge of carrying out this activity were 11 urban artists from the circus and mime discipline who used their talent, joy and who had also the responsibility of transmitting a message of prevention in the fight against the virus. Public Health organisations conducted training for them in prevention and information. It should be noted that these days were selected because the MotorTest was swabbing on average about 200 - 250 people, achieving about 1500 weekly swabs.

As a first step to open spaces for dialogue and healing around mental health through art, the artist La Vanesso made a call for anyone to share their experiences and mental health problems. As an artist, he/she has created pieces of art inspired by these stories, and has published them on social networks in order to make visible, and generate open necessary discussions through which people connect each other, begin to heal and re-imagine the inequalities around mental health.

The NGO Proyecto Suma performed screenings and recitals with Juanchi Baleirón, Elena Roger, Leo García and more artists with the aim of spreading healthy habits during confinement. The goal was to raise awareness about the changes that confinement can produce in mood and how changes in our routines derived from care protocols can alter us. The initiative was intended also to emphasize the importance of resting, doing physical activity and, above all, not cutting the bond with loved ones or groups of belonging. The intervention, which last almost two months constitutes a therapeutic action involving the local community to participate in something collective, to talk about psychical well-being during pandemic and generate peace of mind regarding possible sleep disturbances or mood swings. In addition, were provided tools or consultation phones for cases in which professional assistance was required.

Musical Visiting Friends is a new research project launched by the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University together with the Danish Rock Council (ROSA). The focal point of the project is a series of musical visits, where citizens who, for one reason or another, experience loneliness, are offered a concert in a completely intimate setting at home in the company of a visiting friend. During these concerts, one of the researchers, who got the opportunity to befriend the hosts in advance, participates as a 'third friend' and sometimes interviews the hosts with regards to loneliness and its meaning. The project focuses not only on the target group of people whose lives have been impacted by a state of loneliness but also on artists whose careers have been reshaped by the pandemic. Musical Visiting Friends proposes a new, intimate concert format that could be used in other contexts in the future as well.