Coming Together | Arts, Culture, Health, Wellbeing + Climate

09/11/202227/07/2023 | ACHWS

On the 23rd of September ACHWS held on online event with a focus on climate. Chris Fremantle with input from Lauren Blair, Laurie Duffy, Victoria Hume, Kieran Jack, Gemma Kitson, Leila Loder, Jackie Sands, and Ben Twist reports on what was discussed.

Culture and the arts have a key role at the intersection of health & wellbeing and the climate and biodiversity crises – this was the clear conclusion of the first session held in Scotland focused on the issue.

With speakers from the largest NHS Board in Scotland, the lead organisation focused on greening the arts in Scotland, a socially engaged arts organisation working in a post-industrial context in the West of Scotland, and from a key representative organisation in England, this event scoped out the complexity as well as the opportunities for arts, culture, health and wellbeing to engage with environment. The event was put together in collaboration with Voluntary Health Scotland .

Arts and Sustainability – A New Agenda

The session led off with a presentation from NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (NHSGGC). This highlighted both the significant challenges for Health Boards as well as demonstrating the role of the arts in addressing these challenges.

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Kieran Jack (Assistant Sustainability Officer) led off by highlighting David Attenborough’s statement “Anything we can’t do for ever is by definition unsustainable”. Kieran highlighted the range of challenges including the ‘estate’ (all the buildings and landscapes that an NHS Board is responsible for) as well as the transport, food, and waste challenges.

Kieran highlighted the new standards for buildings that the NHS are working to which has resulted in the new Clydebank Health Centre having heat pumps in the Clyde. Heat pumps take ambient warmth in the river water and turn it into heat for the building. He went to say that NHSGGC is commissioning its first fully net carbon zero health centre.

Gemma Kitson (Greenspace and Urban Realm Officer) discussed the significant challenges for the NHS in turning its traditionally mown grass greenspaces into biodiversity hotspots. She noted the close correlation between disadvantaged communities and areas of ‘vacant and derelict land’ (a specific category for the Scottish Government and Local Authority planning.

Gemma highlighted numerous specific initiatives across NHSGGC to improve landscapes including at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. This agenda has very strong ongoing collaborative work with the arts. Jackie Sands (Health Improvement Senior: Arts and Health) picked up the story talking about the partnership work with Scottish Canals which has resulted in a significant green corridor linking the new Woodside, Possil and Maryhill health centres and the Clay Pits Nature Reserve via the opening up of a public access route the Garscube link as part of the Woodside Health and Care Centre art and environment strategy. Amongst the artworks on the route are some of the last pieces of poetry, earth and climate messages to us all, made by the eminent Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Jackie highlighted the evidence base for arts & health work, in particular Janet Ruiz’ Literature Review. This drew attention to the overlaps in creating quality places, green amenity for community respite and active travel as part of Public Health cross boundary working, community wealth building and the work being taken forward to improve GGC estate helping residents to see value in accessing, making use of these sites and spaces – strengthening the health service Anchor status.

Leila Loder (Waste Officer) picked up the story and highlighted two specific areas of waste – food and plastic. She noted the multiple challenges for reducing waste including staff habits, internal space and infection control. Leila highlighted the impact of a project at Stobhill and Victoria hospitals which had saved NHSGGC £19,000 simply by separating waste effectively.

The value of partnership work between the sustainability team’s different agenda’s and the arts came across very clearly and the potential for the arts to align with NHSGGC’s net zero strategy is increasingly a priority. There was an interesting discussion on the potential for embedding an artist within the Sustainability Team and having a Sustainability Lead for Health Improvement too.

Climate Awards

The second presentation came from Victoria Hume of the Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA), the equivalent of ACHWS in England.

CHWA is a national membership organisation for creative health, with about 6000 members from freelancers to large cultural institutions – and a range of national and regional strategic partnerships. Its three pillars of work are advocacy, networking, and providing resources for the people doing and seeking to understand this work.

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Victoria focused on CHWA’s Climate Awards which have now formed part of their programme for 3 years. 18 projects have been shortlisted over the 3 years and Victoria offered some findings from reviewing this portfolio. She highlighted that the arts & health sector has tenacity – it has been a long and challenging journey to mainstream the arts in health and wellbeing. The projects shortlisted for the Climate Awards suggest several themes including an increasing awareness of the lived experience of climate change, and a focus on skills-development for participants – from horticulture to design and planning. Many offered support for physical and/or mental health. Most of the projects depended on robust and often extensive local partnership to maximise their impact. Often, the arts were specifically used to challenge entrenched systems and create discussion and change, while heritage programmes and cultural buildings offered spaces in which activism and learning could be cultivated.

Victoria noted a positive shift in the last few years, whereby funders and commissioners may be more willing to support work that sees climate and health as intersecting issues, and perhaps beginning to move away from siloes of socially engaged practice.

CHWA’s starter-for-10 resource on climate and health can be found here.

Clyde Rebuilt

The final presentation focused on Clyde Rebuilt , a climate adaptation project involving Creative Carbon Scotland (CCS), the lead organisation for greening the arts in Scotland, and RIG Arts, the socially engaged arts organisation in Greenock.

Ben Twist (Director of CCS) provided the overarching context for adaptation – a key area of work focused on the challenges of being resilient to climate change. Whilst the focus has been on ‘mitigation’ of climate change by actions to reduce carbon emissions, there is increased attention to adaptation, particularly of infrastructure.

Clyde Rebuilt was funded as part of the EU’s Climate KIC Innovation Programme which aims to stimulate regional innovation in adaptation. Clyde Rebuilt was led by Climate Ready Clyde, a consortium of local government (7 local authorities), transport, health and other agencies. Creative Carbon Scotland brought the cultural dimension to the table and Ben highlighted the important impacts on the project of the work with Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) and Rig Arts. He described the way the event at GWL framed the climate crisis in terms of colonialism.

The EIT Climate-KIC approach focused on changing the system rather than individual behaviour change. The Clyde Rebuilt team decided to focus on adapting to excess heat, which is not much considered in Glasgow (!) rather than the more obvious topic of flooding, which is where some work has already been done. A key element of the work done was building a map of the complex social system within which excess heat will be dealt with, to understand who might need to be involved. This included working with organisations which wouldn’t normally be invited to be part of climate change discussion such as housing associations and community groups. They also undertook a Social Impact Assessment. CCS worked with the Climate Ready Clyde Board and those organisations involved in the SIA to introduce more emotion and different ways of thinking into meetings by starting them with poetry – either reading it or running a short workshop on writing it – and ‘imagining exercises’, whereby participants were asked to imagine themselves in a transformed Glasgow in 2045. A survey suggested this increased participation in the meetings. Evaluation of the impacts of this work is available here.

CCS also worked on changing and simplifying the language used to communicate about adaptation, and by working with Rig Arts and Glasgow Women’s Library brought different voices into the discussion.

Laurie Duffy the lead artist for RIG Arts on the Clyde Rebuilt project introduced the organisation. RIG Arts is an award winning, socially engaged arts charity based in Inverclyde bringing artists and the community together in a collaborative and creative way. RIG Arts design and deliver a dynamic programme of visual arts & film projects, workshops, exhibitions, public artworks, community spaces and events. They use creativity to work with people to affect change in Urban Regeneration, Climate Challenge, Heritage and Mental Health. RIG Arts are passionate about using creativity and innovation to influence change and to make a positive difference in people’s lives and their environments. They have also collaborated with NHSGGC on other projects including the New Greenock Health and Care Centre’s Building Better Healthcare Award winning collaborative arts strategy ‘Lochs , Rivers and Sea – Found, Fragmented and Forgotten’ project, led by Lead Artist and Curator Stephen Hurrel.

Laurie described how their approach to Clyde Rebuilt grew out of ongoing programmes focused on working with communities on mental health involving projects on upcycling. Until that point, Rig Arts had not looked at adaptation so this was a new area for them. Working with a poet and a collage artist, workshop participants were sent surprise activity packs so they could write poetry and draw maps of an adapted Inverclyde. Workshops were then held on-line as Clyde Rebuilt was disrupted by the Covid-19 lockdown. The results are available here and the zine Costa Del Gourock.

At Glasgow Women’s Library a speaker Dana Thomas, who works with the Ubuntu Woman’s Shelter, an organisation working with migrants who have no recourse to public funds, highlighted the links between climate change and colonialism and sought to change the discourse and perspective from a western, white-focused one to one which acknowledges how a colonial framing still pervades both action and discussion. This opened up new avenues of thought for a local authority officer present who responded, as well as the audience.

The major takeaway Laurie and Ben highlighted was the difference in response to the adaptation from those involved professionally and those who were involved as inhabitants. The former focused on organisational issues such as buildings, infrastructure and risk registers, whereas the latter asked questions such as ‘What if I can’t leave my home?’ and ‘What if my home isn’t suitable during a heatwave?’

The chat included various useful references:

Faculty of Public Health’s climate change strategy and a library of excellent resources on health and climate change: https://www.fph.org.uk/policy-advocacy/special-interest-groups/special-interest-groups-list/sustainable-development-special-interest-group/resources-on-climate-change-and-health/
Care of People X Planet (COP2) – a global network of organisations looking at how to strengthen societies to collectively care for each other to care for the planet: https://www.cop2.org/
NHS Scotland emergency and sustainability strategy, launched August 2022: https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/sustainability-and-environment/new-sustainability-strategy-launches-for-nhs-in-scotland-22-08-2022/
Shaping Places for Wellbeing programme: https://www.improvementservice.org.uk/products-and-services/consultancy-and-support/shaping-places-for-wellbeing-programme
Tonic Arts (Arts in Health) and Green Space and Health Programmes across Lothian https://nhslothiancharity.org/what-we-do/our-work/
Culture is the 4th Pillar of Sustainability including this coming from the British Council recently https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/the_missing_pillar.pdf
Creative Carbon Scotland Embedded Artist Project toolkit https://www.culturaladaptations.com/toolkit/embedded-artist-projects-for-adaptation-toolkit/
Artist Placement Project https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/artist-placement-group
Another example artists facilitating decision-making: https://sharedfuturecic.org.uk/democracy-pioneers-katy-rubin/

Thanks to Voluntary Health Scotland and in particular Lauren Blair for hosting and support with chat.

Supporting Culture and Wellbeing from the Grassroots

16/05/202216/05/2022 | ACHWS

Written by Lewis Hou (Founder and Director, Science Ceilidh)

Harmony Choir joining in a Fun Palaces even in Leith (Chris Scott, 2016)

Culture has an incredible role to play in supporting health and wellbeing so how do we support this on a grassroots level, starting from communities themselves?

I ask this question in response to a provocation that was brought up during a recent Culture Collective meeting I was invited to – “How do we move away from a problem-solving mentality when it comes to working with communities?”

This struck me as a powerful question particularly in the context of health and wellbeing and brought to mind some of the learnings we’ve developed as part of our action research work with the Fun Palaces campaign supporting Cultural Democracy in contrast to the Democratisation of Culture. That is, rather than valuing and making only one type of predefined “culture” more accessible, opening up “what counts” as culture in the first place and challenging a hierarchical and “deficit model” approach – that communities who don’t engage in specific cultural forms are somehow lacking. Instead, how do we support communities as active agents in their own cultural life and wellbeing and recognising their existing assets, knowledge and expertise?

This is one of the core philosophies that motivates our work with Science Ceilidh and something we celebrate during the Fun Palaces weekend of action in October – our shout out of the value of the skills and passions already in all communities and the power this has to challenge social isolation among other wider themes of climate action and inequity.

Another approach we take is breaking down the barriers around understanding (and contributing to) the links between creativity and wellbeing in the first place. We do this on the ground as practitioners through our school and youthwork programmes supporting educators and learners (including with our Youth Music Initiative resources) along with programmes such as supporting singing leader practitioners to do action research together and co-develop toolkits to support inclusive choirs and connecting the links (and appropriate boundaries required) between singing and mental health (our Singing Side By Side project).

Beyond delivery, we also hold space and networks “connecting the connectors” of communities – the trusted intermediaries who have built up meaningful relationships and can themselves advocate and support diverse cultural participation, ownership and wellbeing. This is the aim of the Culture and Wellbeing Community Network Scotland as an informal network with a facebook group, mailing list and discussions sharing ideas on broad themes across sectors – from community anchors like libraries to wider third sector organisations, creative practitioners and individuals and groups who are just curious themselves. For specifically youth workers – a critical bridge to a wide range of young people – we also support the Open Mind Network who meet to share practice and ideas supporting creativity and mental health.

Communities themselves should also be leading the evolving understanding of the role culture and creativity have in wellbeing more widely – and there is an increasing understanding that research must meaningfully incorporate different types of expertise and lived experiences.

What might it look like to be able to support communities to work with researchers to explore mental wellbeing in a way which is genuinely equitable rather than only being researched “on” – at best tokenistically included and at worst, extracted from. This is a question we are working with the British Science Association to understand with The Ideas Fund which is taking a more participatory approach to supporting these types of partnerships with groups in the Highlands and Islands. The first round supported over half a million pounds between 15 groups – many of whom this was their first experience of working with researchers and for some, their first bit of funding. Many of these projects heavily embed artists and arts-based approaches to explore mental wellbeing – from carers working as peer researchers in Moray and families on the Isle of Gigha understanding the role of art and nature, groups in North Uist exploring the role of gaelic heritage and digital approaches, to youth-led projects understanding the wellbeing benefits of blue spaces or glasswork in Caithness.

A sharing ceilidh with New Scots sharing a kurdish dance (Chris Scott, 2019)

Convening the groups and researchers for our regular Community of Practices has provided rich opportunities for both peer-based learning and connections along with wider learning about how these partnerships develop and can be supported – how to balance the push and pulls of having enough structure whilst being responsive to community needs (especially during a pandemic) and how to share power and decision-making in spite of the different pace and administrative requirements of community and academic research.

We have learnt a lot about the process of funding and supporting this work more equitably, and keen to share this to the wider sector (see some early reflections here). This has shaped our currently live Second Round calling for Expressions of Interest to join a funded “incubator” which provides tailored support, matching with researchers, and development time before finalising a project collaboratively between partners and the fund itself.

If you’re a community group in the Highlands and Islands and/or a researcher (including independent researcher) and interested in this process, find out more here. If you’re interested in this grant scheme (or any of our other projects) on a strategic level, we host an active stakeholder network sharing learning and opportunities to connect – please get in touch lewis@scienceceilidh.com

CAIR: Caithness Artists in Residence, Lyth Arts Centre

24/02/202227/03/2022 | ACHWS

Lyth Arts Centre (LAC) is the UK’s most northerly mainland arts centre, presenting an annual programme of live performance across Caithness alongside contemporary visual art and an extensive participatory programme of educational and socially-engaged arts projects led by local creatives in our community. LAC strives to be a nationally and internationally recognised, industry leading small arts centre that practices radical localism and challenges conceptions about what it means to be ‘rural’. Our Caithness community is at the heart of everything we do and we work across the county acting as a cultural hub for the North of Scotland.

Since the pandemic, LAC has been developing new arts and wellbeing programmes. Central to this has been CAIR: Caithness Artists in Residence – a new community arts initiative that connects artists and creative practitioners with distinct Caithness communities.
Led by LAC and local community organisations, the project explores how we could work with artists and facilitate creative responses to local problems, encouraging creative cultural activism and prioritising an artist and community centric approach to recovery after Coronavirus.

A steep decline in our communities mental wellbeing since Covid-19 is regularly reported by many of our partners and their participants. In response to this, several of the CAIR projects have focussed on arts-based wellbeing activities to reduce isolation, improve confidence and explore tools and ideas for healthy wellbeing in Caithness.

Five local artists worked with local communities in Caithness, responding to Locality Plans within the area. Kelly Munro worked with local young people to explore their maritime heritage and identity through metalwork and design. Karlyn Sutherland worked specifically with Caithness Community Connections in Lybster using her vast skill base. George Gunn worked across the county delivering writing workshops and developing ‘Words on the Wind’ a community poem/film project which explores and captures what it means to live in Caithness today. Donna Swanson collaborated with young people and communities in and around Thurso using theatre and film techniques to explore mental health and other local issues. And Joanne B Karr collaborated with Befriending Caithness – a voluntary service that aims to reduce isolation and loneliness in the county by matching volunteers to older isolated adults in the county.

During Joanne’s project she collaborated with Befriending Caithness to develop a textile reminiscent pack through weekly sessions. The themes were varied and included “School Days” and “Fishing Folk”. The group decided to collaboratively create a “reminiscence pack library” at the Befriending Caithness office where befrienders can go and pick up a pack and take it along to their meetings with befriendees to encourage conversation and memory. These will also be available to local care homes. As a culmination of the project the group decided to host a touring exhibition, taking some of the work to more rural and remote befriendees gardens.

Feedback from befrienders described the project as being like a breath of fresh air and a true inspiration, reporting that the best part of the project were the conversations that people had in preparation before sewing. Key worker Angie House from Befriending Caithness said,

‘The whole experience has encouraged conversation at a very difficult time, it brought laughter, socialising and exchanging our past individual stories within the community.’

Watch videos and find out more about the CAIR: Caithness Artists in Residence here.

Charlotte Mountford, Co-Director Lyth Arts Centre

A Frame is Not a State of Mind – Artist Talk

04/02/202216/05/2022 | ACHWS

This was the first in a series of Creative Coffee Break Conversations: addressing the role of culture in tackling health inequalities, an event organised by Arts Culture Health and Wellbeing Scotland.

Health inequalities are the unjust and avoidable differences in people’s health across the population and between specific population groups.

Health inequalities go against the principles of social justice because they are avoidable. They do not occur randomly or by chance. They are socially determined by circumstances largely beyond an individual’s control. These circumstances disadvantage people and limit their chance to live longer, healthier lives.” (Public Health Scotland)

During this Artist Talk, Chris McAdam and James McLardy were in conversation to discuss their process of making their collaborative film works during the two lockdowns. The first collaboration explored remoteness and the strangeness of the moment. The second key, life moments and their collaborative working relationship. Both films explore and question feelings of isolation and anxiety.

This original event took place online via Zoom on Tuesday 7 December 2021.

You can access the films and documentation of the conversation as a Vimeo Collection below. Or you can view these separately: documentation of the conversation between Chris and and James, and the films that they talk about A Frame is Not a State of Mind and Summer in to Autumn.

Thanks to Chris McAdam and James McLardy for sharing their work with us.

This was the first event in series of conversations which will include looking at the role culture can play in supporting health outcomes including: food poverty, women’s health, and global culture and health collaborations. More information will be available soon.

Foodbanks and Films

08/12/202109/12/2021 | ACHWS

Foodbanks and Films

Is it time to start talking about ‘long covid’ for communities, as well as individuals? There is increasing evidence, such as a recent report from Community Leisure UK of multiple challenges in reopening and staffing community venues and spaces. Many of the local groups that we work with in Regional Screen Scotland are reporting difficulty in recruiting enough volunteers to be able to get up and running again. Undoubtedly, a whole range of community activities and events have not restarted and many may perhaps be permanently lost.

We need an urgent national dialogue about this problem and what it may mean for long-term personal and communal health. But, is part of the problem that we lack the evidence, the metrics and even the language to appreciate and talk about the potential scale and impact of what’s happening?

As my field is community and local cinema let me cite one excellent example that we work with – the film screenings organised (pre-Covid) by North Ayrshire Foodbank. As Coordinator Craig Crosthwaite explains:

‘North Ayrshire Foodbank has been operating a mobile cinema project for 6 years. The aim is to address the aspiration of the Scottish Government to have communities experience a large screen cinematic experience. The portable system has been in use at a weekly showing in our own base in Ardrossan (pre-COVID) and at venues across the local authority including churches, community centres, libraries and schools.

The mobile cinema was funded for three-years by Impact Funding partners to recruit and train volunteers to operate the system (how to use the equipment, food hygiene, lifting and handling, DTP, photography and Pacific Institute’s “Steps to Excellence” for personal development), who then hosted 4 showings a year in their community. We recruited 11 teams who operated 44 showings a year (pre-COVID).

We are currently working on a Young Directors’ holiday project which started this October with the aim for the group to produce a 2 minute film during Easter 2022 which will be shown at future mobile cinema events.

We call our cinema sessions “Film for Food” where the aim is to raise necessary items for the Foodbank’s emergency food boxes. Attendees have donated 8 tons of food over the years of operation. Ultimately we use the mobile cinema to raise food, train volunteers, encourage film making and to entertain by screening top rated movies.’

Everyone who hears Craig talk about this work is inspired by the model and by the simple aim that you need to feed the mind as well as the body. But how do we translate this undoubtedly special project into the language of health professionals and policymakers? How do we evidence the health benefits of a film screening in a community affected by multiple deprivation factors? As Claire Stevens of Voluntary Health Scotland puts it:

‘I’m hoping there is a way the contribution can be framed or teased out so as to spell out more overtly the health outcomes for people. There will be health improvement benefits for the community, perhaps aligned to, or complementing the health and wellbeing outcomes that the Food Bank itself is generating? There will be benefits in terms of increased personal wellbeing, reduced social isolation and loneliness, perhaps reduced stigma (less stigmatising to use the Food Bank if it is also offering cinema), and wider public health benefits in terms of increased community capacity and resilience. It contributes to the government and public health’s aspirations to create and sustain 20 minute neighbourhoods.’

But, like thousands of other community initiatives across the country, North Ayrshire Foodbank is run by volunteers, working incredibly hard to simply deliver their core purposes and bring direct benefit to their communities. How do they find the time, the resources and the expertise, to monitor, evaluate and document the health benefits that I’m sure they see, personally and anecdotally, in ways that can contribute to a meaningful discussion about how best to tackle health inequalities in some of Scotland’s poorest areas? I’ve worked in the cultural sector for over 40 years and for most of that time the debate about arts and health has ebbed and flowed, and still the crucial question of evidence has never been resolved, even though we may need the answer more urgently now – post-lockdown, than ever.

Robert Livingston, Director, Regional Screen Scotland

Anything is Possible

brightly coloured image of art work 'Kiss on the Cheek' being hung on wall

08/12/202109/12/2021 | ACHWS

What are health inequalities?

Health inequalities are the unjust and avoidable differences in people’s health across the population and between specific population groups. Health inequalities mean that some people experience poorer health than average and often die younger, for reasons of poverty, deprivation, discrimination and/or disempowerment.

Health inequalities are not inevitable, they are related to our overall social and economic system and the circumstances people find themselves in, and these unjust and avoidable differences in people’s health need to be prevented and reduced. In the most affluent areas of Scotland, men experience 23.8 more years of good health and women experience 22.6 more years compared to the most deprived areas.

The existence of health inequalities in Scotland means that the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health is not being enjoyed equally across the population. Public Health Scotland

So, what role do the arts play in helping to address health inequalities?

The last eighteen months have been an eye opener. When the first lockdown occurred, support, kindness and inventiveness blossomed. Shelter was organised for those who had none, food was delivered to those who had little, and contact was made with those in need of friendly voice.

It also reminded us that significant inequalities continue to exist. Not only do some people not have shelter or enough food to live on, but they also don’t have enough money to heat their home, or access to digital means to stay in touch or to help get the support they need.

When lockdown hit creativity flourished. It flourished not because the right structures had been created for it to do so. It flourished because we are all inherently inventive and the pandemic was a catalyst for creativity in many different walks of life. This was not only expressed through art in the windows, but also through finding quick ways to circumnavigate bureaucratic structures, and to make what seems impossible, possible.

Working in the arts we often talk about the fact that little attention is being paid to its importance and its use in everyday lives. It takes a pandemic to dispel a myth. Creativity is inherent in all of us, it makes us who we are. It articulates what we experience, gives voice to our feelings, provides new perspectives, and can create a sense of hope where things might feel hopeless.

Art creates a space where issues and experiences can be explored from a perspective which resonate with others. It helps us make connections and lets us see experiences from different points of view, be that through writing, for example the 2018 Orwell Prize-winning ‘Poverty Safari’ by Darren McGarvey, or the visual arts practice of 2021 Turner Prize nominated Gentle/Radical.

Creative opportunity provides a space where people with little direct arts experience can come together to share something that inspires, excites or breaks the monotony of life in an institutional setting.

So, how might you go about starting this creative or cultural dialogue? You have to get yourself out there and find ways of getting the conversation going, and that is where the creative process starts. There are many ways to create a space which is open and not intimidating. Through this dialogue we begin to understand how people lead their lives, what pressures and frustrations they face, what their hopes and ambitions are and what interests and skills they bring. Conversations start and evolve. One day you might be gardening with a group of people and as a consequence of what feels like a random conversation about beekeeping, you start on a 3 year-long journey that ends up in a re-designed Scottish Beekeepers pavilion at the Royal Highland Show.

How do we know that any of this makes a difference?

Well, just look at what happened and if you have to be convinced of the fact that art is important of, and in itself, then simply look at the environment it creates. One where people are valued, where skills are recognised and identities celebrated.

Although art, creativity and culture is not some kind of magic healing bullet it is intrinsically about who we are, or perhaps more importantly, what we could be.

Jan-Bert van den Berg, Director, Artlink Edinburgh & Lothians and Board Member of ACHWS.

All images are credited Artlink Edinburgh & Lothians.

Additional reading:

An excellent, short, comprehensible and up to the minute one page briefing on health inequalities, provided by the Scottish Parliament’s information team (SPICE). It also discusses why and how covid is widening the health inequalities gap between certain groups, notably rich and poor: https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefings/Report/2021/3/23/ee202c60-93ad-4a27-a6e7-67613856ba24

ACHWS offers a platform to ask questions & bringing different voices, perspectives, disciplines & sectors together

28/10/202128/11/2021 | ACHWS

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted existing health inequalities across society. A large and growing body of evidence tells us that cultural engagement has a key role in helping to helping to address health inequalities within our communities.

Many of ACHWS membership are committed to increasing opportunities to engage with the arts and culture within health, social care and community settings. There is a huge amount of expertise and innovation within this community of practice, but there is also so much still to learn as we look to tackle the shocking gaps in equity highlighted by the pandemic.

How do the arts and culture contribute to tackling these inequalities? How can we ensure that our understanding of culture is varied and diverse? How do we continue to widen access to creative and cultural opportunities to support wellbeing? As a community, one amongst many rich and diverse communities, how can we as individuals and organisations make sure that we don’t perpetuate inequalities that exist elsewhere in the system? The arts, culture, heritage, health and social care sectors increasingly overlap, so what can we learn from one another?

As a network ACHWS hopes to offer a platform to ask questions and bringing different voices, perspectives, disciplines and sectors together. For this reason we decided to use our first newsletter to focus on the role the arts and culture can play in helping to address health inequalities. Over the Winter months we will be hosting a series of online conversations exploring the role the arts and culture more generally can play in helping to address health inequalities. The programme will cover many themes and perspectives including: mental health, food poverty and women’s health.

We’re sure many of you will already be having similar conversations, and we hope that together we can inform cross-sector dialogue and advocacy for the impact the arts and culture can have on health and wellbeing.

Please get in touch if you would like to share your experiences and any work you are involved in. We would especially like to hear from people who are often under-represented within conversations about arts, culture, health and wellbeing.

image credit: Artlink Edinburgh & Lothian

A Frame is Not a State of Mind – Artist Talk

03/02/202104/02/2022 | ACHWS

Health inequalities are the unjust and avoidable differences in people’s health across the population and between specific population groups.

Health inequalities go against the principles of social justice because they are avoidable. They do not occur randomly or by chance. They are socially determined by circumstances largely beyond an individual’s control. These circumstances disadvantage people and limit their chance to live longer, healthier lives.” (Public Health Scotland)

This original event took place online via Zoom on Tuesday 7 December 2021.

Thanks to Chris McAdam and James McLardy for sharing their work with us.