Collaborations Across Sectors: arts activities in primary healthcare.

This is comprised of two case stories.

Lead Facilitator

Anita Jensen

Group Members

Padmalatha Ravi, Sri Vamsi Matta, Aruna Manjunath, Yuthika Subramanyan, Arjun Khera, Shilok Mukkati, Sannidhi Surop, Pallavi Chander, Mohini Singh, Madhu Shukla, Vijji Chari, Debosmita Dam, Anirban Ghosh, Vishnu Nambiar

Arts on Prescription (AoP)

CASE STUDY ONE

Expanded Summary:

This programme in Region Skåne, Sweden is a collaboration between the Competence Centre for Primary Healthcare, 16 healthcare centres and nine cultural institutions and organisations.

Patients with mental health issues (stress, anxiety, mild to moderate depression, risk of social isolation/loneliness) can be referred by their healthcare provider to a ten-week programme of arts activities.

Participants meet twice-weekly for approximately 2 hours, over a ten-week period and experience a variety of group-based arts and culture activities. All activities are held outside a healthcare setting and facilitated by professional artists, museums pedagogues/educators or librarians. Together with a project coordinator the group experience different arts and culture activities. Examples include:

• Literature reading at the library; guided viewing and creative workshops at different museums and galleries; performance at the opera, historical city walk; public arts walk; singing and music activities at a music venue; interactive stage performance provided by a theatre group, as well as workshops at a craft and design centre.

• The programme is designed to encourage ways of engagement with different arts disciplines as well as providing various aesthetic experiences both ‘active’ (creating artworks, walking, singing) and ‘receptive’ (listening to music, viewing artworks, listening to spoken literature) to stimulate the senses and ensure a holistic approach to the participants’ health and wellbeing.

• The programme aims to increase social connectedness and stimulate motivation, as well as fostering positive mental health and wellbeing through arts participation in a safe place with sensitivity and awareness of the different health needs and abilities of the participants; providing a space that generates quality arts activities and aesthetic experiences, enabling participants with choices, expressions, and new experiences – a space where they can play and be curious without judgments.

Choir for Wellbeing

CASE STUDY TWO

Expanded Summary:

This programme is a collaboration between the Competence Centre for Primary Healthcare in Region Skåne and the music venue Malmö Live.

The session starts with a brief warming up exercise facilitated by the choir leader, leading to a sequence of different songs performed by the choir with opportunity for individual’s choices. A song often ends with a conversation about the lyric or some personal associations with the particular song.

Participants meet twice-weekly for approximately 2 hours, over a ten-week period and experience a variety of group-based arts and culture activities. All activities are held outside a healthcare setting and facilitated by professional artists, museums pedagogues/educators or librarians. Together with a project coordinator the group experience different arts and culture activities. Examples include:

The activity takes a holistic approach to promoting and maintaining good mental and physical health through group singing. Research shows that choral singing has a positive impact in terms of existential, emotional, social and physical aspects. There is evidence that singing releases endorphins, serotonin and dopamine - the 'feel-good substances' that elevate mood and can contribute to better wellbeing.

The Unexpected:

This community gave us some negotiating power with spaces, funders etc. It also seemed to intimidate the institutional partner who had assumed that I would be working with them as an independent practitioner. So, it became clear that there was power in a collective.

How wonderful it was to do this work with and in community. There was a sense of care that each of us could derive. Struggles and successes in the work were brought to the community. Sundays like Mondays also became a place to grapple with issues like caste and our own relationship with it.

The fact that we came back to this community regularly and reported on our work also kept the quality of the work high. It also allowed for ethical issues to be raised and grappled with.

Competition kills collaboration and in this work competition is unhealthy. In Sundays for Mondays we had no competition for resources or recognition. We kept all decisions including financial ones transparent. Control kills care. It is important for the one that initiates or takes on larger responsibility to not try and control the work of the collaborators .

Competition kills collaboration and in this work competition is unhealthy.

— Maitri Gopalakrishna
OUTCOMES:

• A strong community or practitioners that support one another

• New collaborations and projects

• Developing structural support for the work

• More efficacious and ethical work

• Developing language to document and communicate our work to those in other allied fields and beyond

Questions:

What questions did this project call attention to about what is needed to support the care and wellbeing of artists or communities in need of care?

Were there new learnings or an affirmation of past learnings?

CONSIDERATIONS:

This project deeply affirmed the importance of community as a care resource for arts-based community mental health practitioners. These communities are hard to come by and so it fell on us to create it for ourselves. It is possible and relatively easy to create these communities but some considerations (not exhaustive) to ensure it is supportive and a care resource.

—

1. Transparency of decision making (including financials)

2. Non-competition—at no point should there be a sense of competition for resources or recognition. Collaboration and mutual dependency must be encouraged and sustained

—

3. Encourage processes of co-creation but offer autonomous space for individual styles and creativity to shine. In Mondays like Sundays, each project facilitation team had autonomy over what they did in their groups.

4. Trust is earned so take time and put effort into getting to know each other.

5. Watch out for control

RESOURCES

To learn more, or for more information please see:

RESOURCES

To learn more, or for more information please see:

Case Stories ✲ Case Stories ✲ Case Stories ✲ Case Stories ✲ Case Stories ✲