Art of Mental Health
Danish Cultural Institute has entered in a close partnership with Center for Arts and Mental Health, a multi arts centre at Amager Psychiatric Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark (Foreningen Kunst og Mental Sundhed). Together we aim at promoting recovery-oriented art-based interventions in psychiatric care in general and also exploring the possibilities for global solutions to the global challenge of rising cases of mental disorders.
An international conference will be organized in St Petersburg to bring together professionals from the art sector and health care sector across borders to present new, innovative cross-sector methods for participatory and inclusive work with people with mental disorders. The conference is valuable for the professionals and provides the possibility of collecting data to research the differences and similarities in language and perception of mental disorders in different cultural contexts.
The field of art and mental health is very sensitive and therefore it is extremely important to keep very high professional standards and conceptualize the positive effects of tested interventions. This project will do exactly this by bringing the concept REWRITALIZE to Russia, where professional authors will work with professionals from other sectors through creative writing in a hybrid between a psychotherapy group and an art workshop, combining the strength of creative and playful exploration with the structure of the therapeutic intervention.
All of this will also be used as elements of raising awareness across sectors of the important role art can play in mental health recovery processes.
A documentary from the conference will be produced and selected high quality initiatives from Denmark, Finland and other Northern Dimension countries will be presented through local and regional networks and platforms.
The project is the part of “The Art of Staying Healthy” programme led by Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture – NDPC, NDPHS Northern Dimension Partnership in Public Health and Social Well-being, and EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC Global), co-funded by the European Commission.