EditorCMS, Author at PerFare

First newsletter issue

6 partners from 5 different countries

joining forces to stimulate a collaborative approach between project partners and their local welfare system

Getting to know best practices in cultural welfare - Field visit Italy

What is cultural welfare?

Which cultural welfare practices exist already on a European level?

How do we fill the existing gaps that may prevent its correct implementation in the areas involved by PerFare?

These are the three questions that set the start of our project.

To answer the first, we can use the definition provided by Cultural Welfare Centre:

"Cultural Welfare is an integrated model for the promotion of well-being and health of individuals and communities, through practices based on the visual and performing arts and on cultural heritage."

Therefore, when we speak about cultural welfare we refer to the capacity of cultural use and participation to be enabling and crucial factors in the promotion of health, in the strengthening of care relationships and in the fight against social inequalities.

Having answered that, the second step is to recognize those practices that are already implementing such approach. In fact, following the project's objectives, these good practices will be mapped and further capitalized, in order to not just learn from them, but also operate in those gaps where they haven't yet.

To do so, a peer-to-peer capacity building among Perfare partners is necessary.
And the best way to do so, is to start with field visits of the local realities in the partnering countries.

On 20th and 21st October, the first study visit was hosted by Consorzio Marche Spettacolo in Ancona, Italy.
During these days, PERFARE partners had the occasion to meet face to face for the first time and to start reflecting on the upcoming steps, finding common ground and setting internal deadlines for their duties.

Moreover, it was an occasion to inspire their future collaborations with the welfare sector. The Ancona study visit has, in fact, grouped a few presentations of good local practices and relevant experiences that combine culture and well-being, by the following guest speakers:

Stefania Terrè, visually-impaired actress and theatre director, vicepresident of Unione Ciechi e Ipovedenti delle Marche (blind and visually-impaired regional union - Marche);
Paolo Marasca, Councilor for Culture of Ancona, on KUM! Festival
Riccardo Serenelli, Villa inCanto
Roberto Paoletti e Stefania Crocetti, La Casa di Asterione
Piero Alessandrini e Vincenzo de Vivo, Accademia d’Arte Lirica di Osimo
Massimo Zenobi, Fondazione Franco Moschini (Politeama)
Isabella Carloni, Rovine Circolari
Vito Minoia, Teatro Aenigma

The partners also had the chance to visit one of the best cultural welfare examples in Ancona: Museo Omero, National Tactile Museum. Here, they could explore art by using touch instead of eyes, emulating the experience of visually-impaired audiences, to whom the museum is addressed.

This is just the beginning, stay in touch to know more!

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by EditorCMS

A new project on cultural welfare is coming to town!

June 2022 has set the start of a new European cooperation project.

PERFARE - Performing arts to promote social welfARE access in Europe is a small scale cooperation project co-funded by the Creative Europe programme, born thanks to the partnership formed by Consorzio Marche Spettacolo (lead partner) and Welcome APS from Italy, Pro Progressione from Hungary, Artemrede from Portugal, the Foundation AltArt from Romania and the City Archive "Culture for Elderly" of the City of Malmo from Sweden.

PERFARE promotes social inclusion for those audience groups that are marginalized due to psychological and/or physical health issues and/or because belonging to minorities, through the fruition of cultural activities and performing arts initiatives and while engaging in intercultural dialogue.

The project, which will last a total of 36 months, has the following specific objectives:

To innovate the partners’ organizations creative models in order to make Welfare services (i.e. health and wellbeing) an integral part of their artistic work;
To facilitate the access to performing art experiences for audience groups with psychological and/or physical health conditions by systemising collaboration opportunities among cultural-creative actors and the Welfare Sector.

PERFARE’s initial phase aims at mapping those good practices in cultural welfare that already exist in the partner countries.

Then, the training phase begins and all the partners - a multi-level consortium composed by creative and cultural organizations coming from Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Romania and Sweden - together with actors of the welfare system in their countries/territories, will be firstly involved in a capacity building process to foster their ability to work and cooperate with the actors of their local Welfare systems.

During this period, they will:

search and further map (i.e. through an interactive tool) success stories of such cooperation;
share knowledge and capitalize tools that are already developed;
participate in a tour of field visits across Europe to gain direct experience on how performing arts interventions can improve Welfare services for people with physical and/or mental health issues;
set up a cooperation scheme with one or more stakeholders of its Welfare system.

As a result, 5 calls for action will be launched to fund artists and their innovative ideas, in order to involve audience groups composed of local vulnerable populations with health conditions. The resulting pilot actions will be implemented in the partner territories and evaluated to measure their impact.

Subscribe to our newsletter to follow PerFare's journey through cultural welfare practices.