Second newsletter issue
We're back from the second field visit... and ready for the third!
On 27th and 28th April,
Malmö City Archives hosted us for an amazing programme
filled with inspiring practices.
And on 4th and 5th July,
the partnership will meet up in Montemor-o-Novo
to discover the Portuguese best practices on cultural welfare.
Read here the second newsletter issue
Cultural welfare in Malmö - Study visit in Sweden
6 months after our first study visit, the partners are now ready for the second one, now hosted by The City of Malmö - City Archives in Malmö, Sweden.
On 27th and 28th April, project partners and welfare stakeholders are invited to discover the local best practices sperimenting the beneficial collaboration between Culture&Arts and the Health&Wellbeing sector.
For the occasion, the hosting partner has invited guests with relevant experience on the cultural welfare field, who will further inspire the partners in relation to the upcoming project activities.
Malmö Museums
Birgitta Kelly, Museum Pedagogue
The Museums in Malmö do not only display art and culture, but often involve educational activities including seniors and people with special needs, as well as being part of the initiative Arts On Prescription.
Birgitta Kelly works in the Museum Department of The City of Malmö as a Museum Pedagogue.
Arts On Prescription
Anita Jensen, Culture & Health Strategist in primary healthcare
Arts on Prescription (AoP) is a complementary intervention used to support people who are on sick leave due to stress, anxiety and depression and/or musculoskeletal pain, defined as participating in arts activities in closed groups, for 2.5 hours twice a week for ten weeks including i.e. song, crafts, drama and concert.
Patients are identified and referred to AoP by professionals in primary health care and outpatient psychiatric care.
Anita Jensen writes academic articles on Arts on Prescriptions in Sweden, but also in the other Northern Countries, being Norway, Denmark and the UK.
Dance for Parkinsons
Marie Norrthon, Project Manager Skånes Dance Theatre
A dance workshop for persons with Parkinson's Disease: Dance for Parkinsons consists of classes where participants are empowered to explore movement and music.
Marie Norrthon is a creative producer with many years of experience in making culture available, creating meetings and enabling joint experiences. Her areas of interest are performing arts, art and culture in all forms, public service and accessibility issues, urban development, cultural planning, cultural planning and cultural policy.
KÄRA NÅN!
Ed Damron, artistic director, and Kajsa Littgren, producer, at Expressteatern
Expressteatern was formed in 1986 after studies at Écoles Jacques Lecoq "Mime, mouvement et théatre" in Paris. It created more than 40 performances, mostly for young audiences. They play both on their stage in Malmö and on tour, with the support of Malmö City, Region Skåne, and the Norwegian Culture Council. Expressteatern wants to create a theater that is simple and direct, that makes people's dreams and feelings visible, using the physical theater traditions: mime, masquerade, clowning and commedia dell'arte.
The programme also includes visits of the Malmö City Archives, The Malmö Art Gallery and the Tuppen (The Rooster) - a meeting place for the elderly, run by the Health, Care and Welfare Department.
The City of Malmö
Malmö is one of Sweden's largest and most densely populated cities. Malmö is also an interesting cultural centre, right on the border with Denmark, founded in the 10th century to monitor European sea transits.
In this context, The City of Malmö - City Archives stores the whole Malmö's memory with archives from the city's administration and authorities, as well as large collections of, among other things, family and association archives.
With its concept “Culture for the elderly”, the Archives develop collaborative work between welfare and culture administrations, with the mission to coordinate and make available a wide, qualitative, cultural offering for the elderly population in the city of Malmö. “Culture for the elderly” offers activities where the elderly both consume and co-create. To make this possible, collaborations with cultural institutions are developed and continuously developing, such as with Malmö’s museums, cultural schools, opera venues and other cultural institutions around the city.
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First newsletter issue
6 partners from 5 different countries
joining forces to stimulate a collaborative approach between project partners and their local welfare system
Read more in the first newsletter issue
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PERFARE – Performing arts to promote social welfARE access in Europe 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.
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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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.
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