We ae delighted to announce our SHARED workshop series which will run through February and March this year.

Workshop One, ‘Alignment’, will focus on international arts in health initiatives which build on existing community capabilities. We are delighted to welcome: Nawa Culture and Arts Association, a youth organisation in the Gaza Strip reaching thousands of Palestinian children who have limited access to cultural, artistic and recreational activities; Mishwar, a community-run charity in North Lebanon, near the Syrian border, working with refugee children and young people, through a wide range of arts-based activities; and University of Glasgow’s UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts (RILA)  which promotes creative and artistic approaches to refugee inclusion. 

The title and focal point of Workshop Two is ‘Inclusion’, where we will be joined by: the Sturzebecker Health Science Centre, which is integrating arts with psychosocial therapy (mindfulness) for marginalised groups in Pennsylvania, US; Wellbeing of the Woods, a partnership of visual story-telling group, Open Aye, and Scottish Forestry, providing photography workshops in urban forests to diverse groups in Glasgow; and COSTAR, (a programme of) Community-based Sociotherapy Adapted for Refugees, undertaken with Congolese refugees in Uganda and Rwanda.

Finally, at Workshop Three, we will prioritise ‘Partnerships’, the importance of which Workshops One and Two will already have highlighted. This concluding workshop brings together further international examples of successful collaboration, namely: Music in Mental Health, a 15-year partnership of Royal Liverpool Philharmonic with Mersey Care NHS Trust Life Rooms initiative; Cinema, Memory and Wellbeing, a collaboration with health care providers in the UK and Brazil using film and popular music to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of older people; Dovetale Press, which is creating vibrant versions of classic literary texts for people living with dementia in New Zealand and promoting their use through partnerships with care homes and public libraries.

The workshop with also be an opportunity to demonstrate our SHARED digital anthology, which showcases the outstanding work of many of these projects. Watch this space for forthcoming blogs reporting on each workshop and announcing the launch of the anthology.