Social Prescribing and the Arts – Can Art Save Us?
We are working on the ACTIVATE Project (Social Prescibring for people and communities) and we are in the process of working on IO4: A Social Prescribing Course for Social/Cultural Service educators. We have discovered so many fantastic organisations during our research for this course, it's clear to see there that arts and culture can make a huge difference to people's health and wellbeing.
One of the projects we've discovered is the podcast – Can Art Save Us? We love the idea of this podcast; Paula Moore interviews award winning and diverse artists about courage and curiosity in their work with benefits to mental and societal health for all of us. Free to listen and subscribe, the podcast is available via podbean and multiple platforms including apple, spotify, google, amazon music and more. https://canartsaveus.podbean.com/
Paula Moore's career spans television, arts and education. She has interviewed music legends including Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield and Quincy Jones along with A list actors. She has been interviewing diverse and international artists over the last five years and she has been featured on a variety of newspapers and radio stations in the UK.
"I talk to diverse and award-winning artists about the role of curiosity and courage in their lives and work offering wellbeing insights and benefits for all of us. Season one includes hip-hop poetry, graffiti, Islamic art, tap dance, filmmaking, music, drag, surrealism, photography and performance. The settings for this work includes explosive protests in Istanbul, end of life, the Vatican, boy band tours, the WWII frontline, taking the stage, Egypt, museums, schools and the streets. Being vulnerable is core to expressions of courage that we discuss whilst honesty and openness often drives the artist's curiosity and purpose. These qualities not only fuel great art but serve our mental and societal health too with important implications for democracy to thrive. Are we sure these qualities of curiosity and courage are flourishing and especially as the digital world drives dis-information and pushed content?" Paula Moore
Paula recently gave a presentation at the Arts & Wellbeing Centre, Brighton University and she mentioned the ACTIVATE Project, she's also kindly let us share her presentation, which will give you an idea of the work that the Can Art Save Us? Podcast does. Paula will be launching Season 2 of the podcast in the coming weeks, and we can highly recommend it.
Find out more about Can Art Save Us? here: https://canartsaveus.podbean.com/
Back to the ACTIVATE Project. The project has a strong and cross representational consortium involving 8 partners from 6 countries. It has been developed with a clear goal in mind: to promote the principle of social prescribing to key adult education groups across the EU and empower at risk adults to improve their health literacy and take responsibility for their own health. Effective social prescribing is about providing the building blocks for personal learning & knowledge application in a wellbeing context.
ACTIVATE objectives are directly linked to the needs of our target groups. ACTIVATE will:
Introduce the powerful health and wellbeing concept of Social Prescribing as a lifelong learning tool in Europe
Empower adults to improve their health literacy & take responsibility for their own health (IO2) Effective social prescribing is about providing the building blocks for personal learning & knowledge application in a wellbeing context.
Create tailored guides & supports (IO1, IO3, IO4) for social prescribing implementers to help them understand & embed social prescribing in their work
Facilitate sustain able links between key local & regional social prescribing organisations via creating 5 ACTIVATE PARTICIPANT FORUMS
To find out more about the project you can visit the website:
https://www.socialprescribers.eu/
Or follow the social media pages: