New guide for arts and health collaboration – Talking Points: Arts and Health in Communities

The Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture (NDPC) and the Northern Dimension Partnership in Public Health and Social Well-being (NDPHS) are delighted to announce the launch of “Talking Points: Arts and Health in Communities”.

The guide is about arts-based interventions that combine medical and cultural approaches with the aim of offering support to arts and health practitioners interested in creative approaches to wellbeing.

In a broken and challenging world, the importance of wellbeing is worthy of serious attention. The guide recognizes this and encourages readers to engage in active listening and co-production, which can facilitate extraordinary, life-changing results. The guide consists of  five short vignettes and five short principles authored by Dr Diana Walters (UK) and Inga Surgunte (Latvia). 

Talking Points included in the guide are based on lessons learned in the “Art of Staying Healthy:” pilot projects. The guide is a significant milestone for both the NDPC and NDPHS and has been launched within an interactive online event “Approaches to culture and health cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region”. 

Download and read the guide “Talking Points: Arts and Health in Communities”.

Watch the recording of the guide’s launch at the online event “Culture and health cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region”:

Online event: “Culture and health cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region” from NDPHS on Vimeo.

The guide comes with a health warning – it might change you. So, read, digest, argue, criticize, discuss, and talk. Above all, engage in that active listening that allows us to really hear – with all of our bodies and senses – what someone else is saying. This is the essential basis of co-production, and it can facilitate extraordinary, life-changing results.