Mapping of Initiatives on Culture, Health and Well-being

Reading Well Books on Prescription is a reading scheme which focuses on making self-help publications more readily available to patients suffering with a range of health problems. The idea is that healthcare professionals, where appropriate, can prescribe self-help reading from approved lists of books available in public libraries. There is growing evidence to suggest that this delivers therapeutic benefits for certain people who have been identified by their mental health professional or general practitioner, for example, as potentially benefiting from this type of help.
The national Reading Well Books on Prescription scheme has been endorsed by NHS England (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Children and Young People’s Mental Health) and Public Health England, alongside a range of other national health bodies. The national development of Reading Well Books on Prescription is quality assured. The programme works within the clinical guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and
Care Excellence (NICE) and includes curated core book lists being available in all English libraries.
Reading Well is delivered by The Reading Agency in partnership with Libraries Connected as part of the Libraries Connected Universal Health Offer. It is funded by Arts Council England, The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and Welsh Government.

Arts and health programme embraces a range of arts practices occurring primarily in healthcare settings, which bring together the skills and priorities of both arts and health professionals. From an Arts Council perspective, good arts and health practice is characterised by a clear artistic vision, goals and outcomes. It aims to promote health and wellbeing by improving quality of life and cultural access in healthcare settings. Arts and health can involve all artforms, and incorporate a variety of approaches, including conventional arts production and presentation, arts participation and environmental enhancement. The Arts Council makes a distinction between arts and health practice and the arts therapies. In the former, the primary focus is on the experience and production of art, in the latter, the primary goal is clinical. The Arts Council supports practice where artistic outcomes are prioritised as a means of enhancing health and wellbeing and does not support practice where therapy is the primary goal or outcome.

Artsenta is an award-winning art studio for people who use mental health and addiction services. They provide a range of free creative activities and resources for people to try with the support of their art workers. Some of their sessions include 1-2 hour creative activities: print making, creative writing, pottery, jewellery, drawing, radio show, glass and singing.

Well-Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair features artwork that addresses the complexities of daily life during the pandemic era. Established and emerging artists present multi-disciplinary approaches to pandemic-related issues such as kinship, chronic illness, convalescence, intimacy, the emotional costs of caregiving, and various incarnations of love and community. Responding to the urgent need for social and cultural spaces in which to pause, reflect, and find solace, Well-Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair includes new commissions, participatory workshops, performances, and conversations created to provide an environment in which visitors can experience forms of connection, resilience, action, and hope in turbulent times.

Launched in 2010, the national Art and Culture for Well-being action programme (2010–2014) from Finland sparked extensive development operations across administrative borders. The aim of the programme was to promote health and well-being through culture and to strengthen social inclusion at the individual, community and society level. Earmarking an allowance for the establishment of a coordination centre for the well-being impacts of art was considered an important proposal for further action in the final report of the programme. Thus, Taikusydän was created. The administrative-level programme was unique on a global scale and aimed to promote the impacts of art and culture that support well-being.
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.

Tate Gallery (UK) is developing different gallery programs for its visitors under the theme wellbeing and art. One initiative is an online quiz developed with a psychotherapist to assess visitors mood and match their mood to a Tate artwork. Tate gallery also developed a guide to slow looking for its visitors, emphasizing that slow looking is not about curators, historians or even artists telling how visitors should look at art. It's about a personal experience with the artwork, encouraging visitors to take time to discover and form a more personal connection with it.

Social prescribing - where a person is referred to a link worker who then works with them to identify and link them to activities to improve health and wellbeing - can connect communities and healthcare. It is a way to support people’s wellbeing and quality of life while reducing pressure on the NHS. It links patients to community based activities, rather than simply prescribing them medicine. The paper, 'Connecting communities and healthcare-making social prescribing work for everyone', describes what was learned from the grant holders who are piloting or scaling social prescribing, or who provide services as part of existing schemes. The National Lottery Community Found share experiences and offer inspiration for anyone thinking of designing, improving or expanding social prescribing schemes.

In conjunction with the Public Health Agency Northern Ireland, Healthy Places seeks to collect and share “Bright Ideas” for North Belfast through creative conversations and community engagement. Focused in the neighbourhoods of Ardoyne and Ballysillan, ‘Healthy Places’ seeks to bring the community to the core of development and regeneration. Together, the dual projects of ‘Street Activation’ and ‘Participatory Communities’ have come under the umbrella of “Bright Ideas Belfast”, with Urban Scale Interventions currently carrying out the initial public consultation, asking communities and individuals for their Bright Ideas for North Belfast through workshops and engaging street activities.

Relink is a climate friendly vision for transforming the Westlink and M2 bridges to help relink Belfast. The project has been developed since 2019 through an extensive community and statutory stakeholder engagement process in association with the Public Health Agency. The aim of Relink is to improve the health and social well-being of everyone using the Westlink and M2 bridges, through rejuvenation and animation of its footbridges. The bridges are being reconceived as shared positive spaces that focus on connectivity and climate resilience with the primary focus of improving wellbeing in the area.

The Foyle Reeds seek to be a cultural installation with the dual purpose of a suicide prevention mechanism on the Foyle Bridge. This installation would be the largest public sculpture in Northern Ireland and aims to develop and inform suicide prevention measures for cities worldwide. Linking the Atlantic Way and Causeway Coastal routes this bridge also links Ireland and Northern Ireland. Utilised and developed to its full potential, the Foyle Bridge has the ability to enhance tourism of the wider area, following the success of the Peace Bridge and the landmark that it has become in the city of Derry.