EDRA

The NEFELE Festival, the first European Mental Health and Arts Festival, was an impressive collection of mental health themed art events with 600 artistic participants from 23 countries. It was a small-scale European cooperation project aiming to strengthen all kinds of artistic creation connected with the field of mental health with the goal of broadening the cultural activities for the benefit of artists and enriching therapeutic procedures for the benefit of patients and society as a whole. NEFELE project is the first step towards the establishment of a European Network of Art Festivals on Mental Health.
The project had its focus in the following, prioritised, objectives:
- Organisation of the first European pilot Art Festival for Mental Health in Athens, in October 2016.
- Establishment of the European Network Art Festival for Mental Health and organising its Founding Congress in Athens, in January 2017.
- Support of four (4) local festivals organized by the project partners in their countries
- Development of tools for the professional support of the artists
- Networking and promoting the idea of the art festival that focuses on mental health throughout the EU

From 2007 until now, Art4More has been established as the first festival in Greece to connect art with mental health. Art4More Mental Health & Arts Festival is an innovative international festival dedicated to contemporary art, mental health and public awareness of social issues. It is organized annually by the K.S.D.E.O. on the occasion of World Mental Health Day (October 10). The festival is designed to be in line with the city and its dynamics, inviting visitors to play an active role in the awareness process. Each year a new theme is selected, bringing together contemporary international works in the fields of art, music, film, architecture, theater, dance, new media and design and providing exhibitions, workshops for children and adults, screenings, discussions, events, music concerts, etc.

The Art Mentoring in Mental Health Structures project is a continuation of the successful innovative Art Residencies in Mental Health Structures program, which has been implemented since 2016. As part of the Art Mentoring in Mental Health Structures action, from October to December 2021, ten ASKT artist students visited five mental health facilities (special schools and healthcare day centers) and under the supervision of the therapists, they involved participants into artworks co-creation activities. The co-creation activities were developed in several stages: in the first phase, each artists proposed a concept on which the group is working; in the second phase, the artists through direct contact and co-creation with the participants tries to get to know him/her better, recognizing the needs of the trainee and discovering the techniques that are suitable for the participant; in the third phase the artists is providing to the trainee materials and artistic means through which he/she can express, in order to find his personal style and then create his own artworks.