New Thoughts in Public Health and Head for the Hills...

PROTECTING HEALTH: 

IMPROVING WELL-BEING?

Last Friday 24th February the Centre for Public Health at MMU hosted a talk by Dr Ruth Hussey OBE, entitled Public Health England: A New Approach to 21st Century Public Health Challenges. It was a significant and interesting presentation as it is a critical time in public health development in the UK, and her work entails the smooth transition from the existing model to an emerging, and as yet, not fully formed vision.

Citing the work of mid Victorian physician, John Snow, and his emerging understanding of cholera, Dr Hussey illustrated how, over 100 years later, we are still learning from these experiences, as she explained the Fifth Wave in public health, where we adapt to societal and political changes that impact on population and individual health.

Expanding on the importance of telling the emerging public health story, and generating a shared vision through new relationships, it was clear that there was an emerging role in the public health lexicon for the arts. In the search for new ways of tackling old problems and engaging with communities in ways that are relevant to them, creative approaches should be central to our shared future. Describing her own experience of working with diverse communities, she hit the nail on the head when she reflected that one community member commented, ‘We’ve all got knowledge, but it’s different kinds of knowledge.’

In the drive to understand the impact and reach of public health interventions, the arts/health community is increasingly defining itself in similar language. Similarities can be drawn both in the need to have new ways of understanding our value and our impact through models like Social Return On Investment, and the understanding that focusing on assets over deficits, enables the co-design of practice. This is very much an arts/health model, and the move from illness to wellness is emphasised in the NHS Confederation publication of the same name, which illustrates the place of culture and the arts in the ‘wellness’ movement.

Significantly, Arts for Health at MMU featured explicitly a couple of times during her presentation, which she astutely described as a growing movement, and I would suggest that by engaging at a national and local level, and embedding thinking around the impact of creativity, culture and the arts alongside the scientific model, we will develop a robust approach to 21st Century public health that moves away from narrow reductivism and embraces a more genuinely holistic approach to health and well-being.

NHS REFORM AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Professor John Ashton CBE is Joint Director of Public Health for Cumbria Primary Care Trust and Cumbria County Council. John is well known for his work on planned parenthood, Healthy Cities and for his personal advocacy of public health.  He was also a member of the British delegation to Macedonia during the Kosovo emergency and played a prominent role in resolving the fuel dispute. He has played an active part in developing government policies for public health and under his leadership, the North West became regarded as a centre for pioneering initiatives, including his consistent support of Arts for Health, and whilst he was Regional Director of Public Health, he was the Department of Health sponsor for the Invest to Save Arts in Health Project. He has been instrumental in the development of part one of the manifesto for arts and health.

Earlier this month, Prof John Ashton co-signed a letter in the Independent defending the Royal College of GPs' chair, who opposes reform in the NHS. NHS Cumbria said in a letter to Prof Ashton that he should not express his personal views and told him his actions were ‘inappropriate’’ asking him to attend a meeting planned for last Friday.

John featured prominently in the broadcast media and printed press last week, commenting, “As a public health director and as the advisor for public health to the county of Cumbria... I have the freedom to speak out on matters of interest...I am not acting politically, I am acting professionally, drawing on the evidence of what will happen if we go down the road to private health insurance.”

Whilst John wasn’t acting politically, this is a critical agenda for us all to be engaged in, and regardless of our political allegiances, our health is political and the arts are political too.


Please click on John's photograph to go to his article in the Lancet: The Art of Medicine, Defending Democracy and the National Health Service.

COMMUNICATING SCENARIOS AROUND PANDEMIC PLANNING

For the last couple of years I have had some engagement with the Asia Europe Foundation (ASEF) and have actively worked with them on Scenario Planning around possible future pandemics. The work is gathering momentum and ASEF have produced a number of films to tell the story. They are also developing strategy for delivering this work. More information and short films can be found by clicking on the logo above.


And, purely for ironic entertainment...

ARTS FOR HEALTH ARCHIVE at 

Manchester Histories Festival 

Arts for Health’s Archive goes public for the first time this weekend with a small exhibition and a talk by Dr Langley Brown at the Manchester Histories Festival’s Celebration Day on Saturday, 3 March.

The Arts for Health exhibition is one of 80 displays on local histories that will take place in the Main Hall of Manchester’s magnificent Town Hall. It will introduce the Archive, and present ‘work-in-progress’ towards a larger exhibition that is to be a centrepiece of celebrations this April of the 80th anniversary of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, an event which helped pave the way towards the formation of the British National Parks and the steady growth of public access to wild countryside.  

This ‘work-in-progress’ previews Head for the Hills, a small-scale replica of a mosaic mural that was opened in 1986 by countryside access campaigner the late Benny Rothman. The mural was designed and made by users and staff of Manchester’s mental health services with artists of Hospital Arts (now Lime), but demolished in 2006 during rebuilding at Manchester Royal Infirmary. It was envisaged as celebration of and a lasting monument to the shared experiences, in wild landscapes, of a disparate group of people embodying a kaleidoscope of experience and skills who had only come together through the adverse circumstances of mental distress.

This project is not just the overdue resuscitation of a monument to a kaleidoscope of shared experiences from over a quarter of a century ago; it is also a potential catalyst for innovative approaches in art, wellbeing and ecology that will draw on lessons learnt from history.

The original Head for the Hills project ran during the time that the arts and mental health organisation START in Manchester evolved from Hospital Arts. START went on to inspire further developments including START in Salford, ARC in Stockport, and Connected in Oldham.

The completed replica, made by a group of Manchester Metropolitan University History of Art and Design students led by Langley Brown, will be accompanied by additional documentation on the original project and texts on topics arising concerning art, activism, environment, walking, wilderness and wellbeing, and will feature at the Edale Moorland Centre as part of the celebrations of the 80th Anniversary of the Kinder Trespass in April.

Events on Saturday 3 March:

Arts for Health Archive: Head for the Hills ‘work-in-progress’: 10am-5.30pm, Main Hall, Manchester Town Hall

Talk by Dr Langley Brown: 3.30pm, Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount St, Manchester M2 5NS 

KInder Trespass 80th anniversary events 20-29 April 

Head for the Hills exhibition: Moorland Centre, Edale (exact dates/times to be announced)

For more information email: langley.brown@mmu.ac.uk

Head for the Hills is supported by Derbyshire County Council.

Deller and New Evaluation...

Short and Sweet this week, but two things of interest to keep us ticking over...C.P.

Be Creative Be Well: arts, wellbeing and local communities, an evaluation

Over three and a half years, the Well London programme empowered some of the capital’s most deprived communities to take a proactive role in enhancing their health and wellbeing. Within this programme, there were a number of strands of work with Be Creative Be Well representing the importance of art and creativity in health agendas.

This report is an independent evaluation of Be Creative Be Well, looking at the impact that the quality of the arts and cultural activity can have in community engagement and in improving health and wellbeing.

JOY IN PEOPLE

The Hayward Gallery will be holding a retrospective of Jeremy Deller, which starts on Wednesday and runs until 13th May, titled Jeremy Deller: Joy in People, it will bring together documents of past collaborative events, films, books and banners.

Where is the VISION in Politics? - Artists in the NHS, Yayoi Kusama, Cultural Champions and more...

WHERE IS THE VISION IN POLITICS?
Dementia is a burgeoning health issue, here in the UK and globally. We’re all familiar with the bullet-point ‘facts’, as peddled by the media and more recently by the reporting of neglect by the Patients Association and Care Quality Commission (amongst others). The National Dementia Strategy highlighted the pressing need to address the over-prescribing of anti-psychotic medication and the value of non-pharmacological approaches to dementia care services.

This agenda should be central to the public outrage at NHS reform! This is not just a health issue, this is a political issue. We should expect politicians from all parties to demand cultural change in the way our elders are cared for, particularly the most vulnerable. Where are the politicians who have vision? Where are the politicians who don’t just wait to defend the next policy, or react to media baiting? Where is the dynamic vision in 21st century politics? Step forward and engage. We are your allies and can help create change. Culture and the arts will be central to innovation across society, enabling 21st century well-being that is so much more than a passive acceptance of an intolerable future.

This is a call for a generational shift in the way we think about aging, and plan and deliver care for those who have been the bedrock of our country, its workers, families and free-thinkers.

I am thrilled to announce that Arts for Health will be working with colleagues from around the UK on understanding the impact and reach of the arts on Dementia and the Imagination, with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. More details of this will be available very shortly.

ARTISTS IN THE NHS - in pictures
To raise awareness of the devastating NHS reforms proposed by the health and social care bill, writer Niru Ratnam and Frieze Art Fair curator Sarah McCrory set up a new blog, Artists for the NHS, and have asked artists to make thought-provoking posters. Click on the Alistair Frost poster above.



THE MANIFESTO BEGINS ITS METAMORPHOSIS
And as the manifesto transforms from a pupa to a butterfly, here are a few reminders of part one’s content. (available in plain old black and white too)

YAYOI KUSAMA @ Tate Modern
The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has a retrospective at Tate Modern until 5th June. She’s an interesting person and there’s lots to read in the national press. For this blog, its her honest account of her mental ill-health that is interesting, which began in childhood when she started hallucinating the dots, nets and flowers which frequently appear in her paintings and sculptures. She voluntarily resides in a mental institution in Japan. An interesting interview with her from 1999 can be found at Bombsite, and here is a sample to whet your appetite.

Grady Turner There has been so much interest in your life story as a result of your retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Do you ever fear people may be interested in your biography at the expense of your art?

Yayoi Kusama No, I have no such fear. My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease.

GT We are conducting this interview by fax because you live in a mental institution in Tokyo. Is it true you committed yourself?

YK I was hospitalized at the mental hospital in Tokyo in 1975 where I have resided ever since. I chose to live here on the advice of a psychiatrist. He suggested I paint pictures in the hospital while undergoing medical treatment. This happened after I had been traveling through Europe, staging my fashion shows in Rome, Paris, Belgium and Germany.

GT Even though you are institutionalized, you are a prolific writer and artist. Where do you work?

YK I work at my condominium-turned-studio near the hospital as well as at a studio I’ve been renting for some years, which is just a few minutes walk from the hospital. I also created a large sculpture in the big yard of the hospital—a store-bought rowboat completely covered with stuffed canvas protuberances. I have made about five or six hundred large sculptures so far.

GT Do you still work around the clock for days at a time, as you did in the 1960s? Or is your work routine different now?

YK I work very hard even now, but probably not as hard as I did when I was in New York.

GT You say your art is an expression of your mental illness. How so?

YK My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don’t see hallucinations, though...

Continued on Bombsite.



WHO IS YOUR CULTURAL CHAMPION
Arts and Business are inviting you to consider who you would like as a Cultural Champion. Below you’ll find advice as to what a Cultural Champion is and the types of support they are celebrating. If you would like to nominate someone, then please do go to http://artsandbusiness.org.uk  or email peter.collins@artsandbusiness.org.uk or call 0121 248 1200 for further details.

A POEM for VALENTINES DAY
Looking at poetry in relation to the manifesto and stumbled upon work by Harold Pinter, who I naively only knew as a playwright. How blind! Writing an essay for another piece of work about how we die, I was exposed to the blistering piece by Pinter called, American Football (Please don't click on this link to this poem if your easily offened, or blind to the violence of war). For those of you who are interested in how artists respond to the politics of war, and where work is not embraced by the mainstream media, I recommend it to you. You can read it hear. American Football.
To celebrate all things valentine however, here is a short and sublime piece of writing by Pinter

It Is Here

What sound was that?

I turn away, into the shaking room.

What was that sound that came in from the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?

It was the breath we took when we first met.

Listen. It is here.

NHS

The Poet and Melancholic, Revolution, Film and Artists Commission

The Poetic and Melancholic...

Just how on earth do we distill the key points of the manifesto into something we can utilize? - something we can brandish and be proud of? Here’s some of the beautiful work of poet and artist Robert Montgomery, whose work hijacks public advertising space.

FilmLife

FilmLife exists to capture the stories of organ donation and transplantation through the eyes of young filmmakers. We believe that more people need to be asking and knowing their loved one’s wishes, and we’re inviting passionate people to spark these conversations by creating films about organ and tissue donation. Whether you’ve been affected by organ donation directly or you’re keen to make your first steps into filmmaking have a lifesaving impact, we want to hear from you! Click on image for more details.

Las PINTADAS de la REVOLUCION

Revolution paintings. Graffiti and Arab public spaces

Casa Árabe inaugurates this exhibition which gathers more than a hundred images taken on the streets of different cities of Arab countries which during the last year were immersed in revolutionary processes. This exhibition gathers the popular creative protest expression through the use of public spaces, both in individual and collective initiatives. (click on image below) 

Place: Casa Árabe’s exhibition rooms in Madrid (c/ Alcalá, 62).

Artsist Commission 

Expressions of interest are invited to create a new public realm sculpture to be sited outside the new headquarters of the INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH, (IMH) on the Jubilee Campus of the University of Nottingham. 

IMH are keen to ensure that there is artistic and public engagement with people who have experience of mental health difficulties, and that they are actively involved in the design and building process, so that the final work is inspired by issues related to mental health and one with a wide sense of ownership. As is now well-known, around 27% of the UK population will suffer from some form of mental instability in their life-time, and 3% will suffer from a serious and debilitating form of mental illness. successful candidate will lead an engagement programme with local mental health groups to develop the design, which is likely to be installed by early autumn 2012. A Fee of up to £23,000 is available, to include all design consultation, materials and installation.

To receive the full brief or further details, please email: victoria.tischler@nottingham.ac.uk or timharris1@ntlworld.com

Expressions of Interest are requested by 5pm on Fri 2nd March, 2012 (by email), to include your relevant experience of similar commissions, an outline budget, artist statement and your CV.

Mens health

In collaboration with MOSI and Manchester Mencap an exhibition will be opening to the public this week. We have spent the past year participating in a community psychology project aiming to improve the health of men labelled with 'learning disabilities' and to challenge the label of 'learning disabilities'. We have used a variety of visual and creative methods, which will be on show including photography, art, poetry, film, oral histories and debate. Click on photo above.

Asia-Europe Short Films Contest

The Asia-Europe Foundation invites young film professionals, students and enthusiasts to take part in the Asia-Europe Short Film Contest.

Short, up to 3 min films of any type - animation, documentary, fiction, mobile phone video – to reflect Asia and Europe’s connections of the future, the diversity and the interesting challenges, interactions of two regions, cultural differences or individual relationships.

Submit your short film before 9 April 2012 and you may be among the five winners selected by an international jury and online public voting. Winners will be flown to Singapore to take part in the Award Ceremony and will receive a 2-day filmmaking workshop from a renowned school of arts. SGD 5000 will be awarded for the first place winner. Click on logo above.

Thank You...C.P.

Arts Council funding, Clore Fellowships (Reprise), People's Health Trust and Poetry Please! (ohh, and the manifesto)

So, here's the last sample of people's comments on the m a n i f e s t o  for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them, and that you know how to adjust your volume! Today see’s the thoughts of the President of the Society for Arts and Healthcare (SAH), Dr Gary Christenson, to whom, along with all those who've contributed, I’m incredibly grateful. Now it’s time to collate all the work together and publish part 2, which will be available far and wide.

People's Health Trust: Healthy Communities Small Grants Programme

This small grants programme makes awards of between £5,000 and £10,000 to local projects which help people live longer, healthier lives and address health inequalities. The Tust are particularly keen to support grassroots activities through their small grants programme, which is currently open in nine local society lottery areas. Funding will be available from other local society lotteries in the coming weeks and months, and local charities and community groups are urged to check the People's Health Trust's website for details. For more information, please visit www.peopleshealthtrust.org.uk

Arts Council England launches new fund

The Arts Council has launched a new £37 million fund to ensure more people living in places where levels of involvement are currently low, experience and are inspired by the arts. Over three years the fund will invest in around 15 programmes of activity that use radical new approaches to developing excellent, inspiring and sustainable arts experiences for communities not currently engaging with the arts.

The Arts Council has used the Active People survey to identify 71 areas of the country which fall into the lowest 20 per cent of arts engagement. Typically, grants of between £500,000 and £3 million will be invested in a number of these areas with the aim of increasing participation.

This programme is open to applications from any consortia that meet the eligibility criteria. All applications must be proposing work in one or more of the areas with the lowest 20 per cent of arts engagement as identified by the Arts Council.

There will be two funding rounds for applicants, with the first opening today. Interested consortia need to register their intention to apply with their regional office by 23 March 2012 with the closing date for the first round of applications 13 April 2012.

Excellence, both artistic and in engaging communities, will be at the heart of successful applications, with the Arts Council investing in programmes that encourage long term collaborations between local communities and arts organisations, museums, libraries and local authorities.

As well as increasing artistic participation in these areas, this investment will help the Arts Council learn about the impact of different approaches to increasing engagement. The knowledge gained from the programme will be made available to arts organisations, museums and libraries, local authorities and the wider cultural sector. Click on the logo below to get started!

Clore Fellowships

A reminder of the excellent opportunity of the Clore Fellowships...the clock’s against you, so don’t hesitate. Click on the money!

On the odd bit of poetry...

Why the pieces of poetry? In short, poetry wasn’t something that was part of my life as I was growing up, and over time (and out of the blue) it’s crept up on me, occasionally hitting me in the pit of the stomach, more often than not, explaining something I just haven’t quite understood. I think people reach out to it (or it to them) and find it more eloquent than they’d ever expect themselves to be, particularly at moments of heightened emotion; in times of love and death.

And if any of you want to share something, particularly if you’re from another country, with writers that I’ve never heard of, please feel free to email.

So here’s another Larkin; dark and from his later years. C.P.

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

新年快乐, Lord Howarth on m a n i f e s t o, Manuwangku, Clore Leadership and a National Summit on Participatory Arts

新年快乐       恭喜发财       新年如意

In this week’s m a n i f e s t o responses, we have some poignant political commentary from amongst others Lord Howarth and Mike White. Next week will see the last of these short films of reflective responses, and include comments form the President of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. After this I will begin to draw together the salient themes for our second manifesto installment, which will be published in hard copy as an advocacy ‘tool’. Thank you for your inspiration. C.P

Music by Kronos Quartet, playing Bella by Barlight by John Lurie

MANUWANGKU - UNDER THE NUCLEAR CLOUD

As debate continues to rage (albeit quietly) about the risks of nuclear power, in light of Fukushima and Chernobyl, and in my own part of the world discussions to extend the Lake District National Park’s role as a global nuclear rubbish tip look even more likely, let’s look to a community whose voice has been routinely suppressed over the last 200 years. Yet another reminder, that if we are thinking about this arts/health agenda, we need to be more expansive. 

Jagath Dheerasekara

Muckaty is situated on Warlmanpa country, 120 km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia. Traditional Owners call the area “Manuwangku”. Nomination of their traditional land as a domestic nuclear waste dump site in 2007, coupled with proposals for Australia to “lease” uranium and take back radioactive waste from overseas nuclear power operations, have generated justifiable fear and concern amongst the Aboriginal communities in and around Muckaty (Manuwangku).

The exhibition, “Manuwangku, Under the nuclear cloud” is focused on this community under threat. Photographs by Jagath Dheerasekara, Curated by Sandy Edwards are online @ http://jd.photoshelter.com/index and (if you happen to be one of our Australian followers) on show at Pine Street Creative Arts Centre, 64 Pine Street, Chippendale, Sydney until 28th January

Clore Leadership Programme

Applications for 2012/13 Fellowships are now open and close 24 February 2012.

Since 2004, the Clore Leadership Programme has awarded over 200 Fellowships to outstanding individuals from across the cultural sector.  Fellows come from diverse backgrounds, they may be working freelance or within organisations, both large and small,  in areas ranging from archives to theatre production, and including visual and performing arts, film and digital media, heritage, creative industries, museums, libraries and cultural policy.

http://cloreleadership.org/page.php?id=48 

In Our Times call out

Calling artists & others incensed by poverty & inequality. We need you to help us use art to expose the truth and galvanise action. Find out how to get involved in In Our Times. We’d love to hear your thoughts.  How do you think art can best speak to people?  How can it best incite action?

http://collective-encounters.org.uk/2012/01/in-our-times-call-out/ 


Because We’re Worth It: National Summit on Participatory Arts

22nd March 2012 (10am – 4pm: registration begins at 9.30am)

Cost: £15 per person (to cover minimum costs)

Venue: The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH

Because we’re worth it! is an important national Summit exploring and celebrating the value of participatory arts. Participatory arts have the power to change people’s lives for the better; provide connections, experiences and rich stories. The UK’s participatory arts scene is constantly changing, innovating, developing, celebrating, exploring and recording fantastic and ground breaking work.

To book: www.eventelephant.com/becausewereworthit. For more information: 01254 674 777 or email hello@mailout.co

VI

Kick up the fire, and let the flames break loose

To drive the shadows back;

Prolong the talk on this or that excuse,

Till the night comes to rest

While some high bell is beating two o’clock.

Yet when the guest

Has stepped into the windy street, and gone,

Who can confront

The instantaneous grief of being alone?

Or watch the sad increase

Across the mind of this prolific plant,

Dumb idleness?

Philip Larkin

from The North Ship, 1945