Medway and Kent Dance Arts Culture Health and Wellbeing

Hosted by Medway Council’s Arts Development and Public Health Teams in partnership with University of Kent who together recognise the value of dance, arts and culture and the benefits towards health and wellbeing. We want to build on the progressive work of Medway Council’s Public Health team.

This event is suitable for artists, creative industries, health professionals, PhD students, academics and Medway Voluntary Agency (MVA) Members.

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Medway and Kent Dance, Arts, Culture for Health and Wellbeing:

A one-day interactive symposium

Wednesday, 17 April 2019

10am-5pm

Historic Dockyard Church, Chatham, ME4 4TY

 

How do dance, arts and culture benefit health & wellbeing?

On 17th April 2019, we invite you to address this question.

We will be exploring this topic as a one-day symposium, with specific focus on how it relates to Medway and Kent.

This symposium will include talks and presentations with a mix of evidence-based and academic research, good practice, projects and work in progress.

The speakers and presenters will be drawn from the arts and creative industries, academia and the public sector.

We have confirmed all speakers for this event including;

• Hedley Swain (Arts Council England)
• James Williams (Director of Public Health)
• Jan Burkhardt (One Dance UK, Strategic Lead in Health and Wellbeing)
• Janice McGuinness, CEO (People United)

WHY:

We want and need to start a conversation in order to initiate more collaborative relationships between the creative sector, public health, academics and voluntary sector in Medway and Kent.

Drawing upon great examples we will be sharing where this approach has worked. For example, the Creative Health 2017 report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing which concluded: “arts-based approaches can help people stay well, recover faster, manage long-term conditions and experience a better quality of life”.

We believe we have an opportunity, and need, to build on these examples and evidence based research in Medway and Kent.

The public sector have shown numerous times how well we can reach out and work with artists, delivering projects that are meeting some of the needs for health and wellbeing.

Now it is time to make this process a two-way street: We want to help artists and creative collaborations to find ways to make it easier for them to connect with relevant partners in public health, academic and the voluntary sector.

By taking this approach not only do we reduce the risk of duplicating projects, we also have the opportunity to break down silos, enabling new ideas and approaches to be shared effectively between sectors.

We believe much of this comes down to better communication and understanding. We also believe we need to evolve our approaches continuously and collaboratively.

This symposium is a starting point.

AIMS:

1. To create the foundations to give the health and well-being sector partners an opportunity to build partnerships with the dance, arts and cultural sector and find out more about each other’s work priorities and vice versa.
2. To bring health and well-being sector partners and dance, artists and creative industries together to explore tangible health and well-being outcomes and highlight new ways of working.
3. To present evidence-based research across a variety of age groups, from children and young people to older adults for example; tackling childhood obesity, improvement of mental wellbeing and cognitive function and reduction of cardiovascular risk, risk of falls and social isolation.
4. For the health sector to share their priorities and work areas and explore how dance and the wider arts and cultural sector can help contribute and compliment health priorities in Medway and Kent.

HOW:

The one-day symposium will bring together key stakeholders from Medway, Kent and the wider region. They will share good practice from diverse organisations in talks and presentations, igniting debate and discussion on how we can evolve our collaborative approaches, while focusing on the core question of the day.

This event is free to attend but please register in advance

OUTCOMES:

The day is designed to create positive discussions and ideas that are open, constructive, collaborative and forward-thinking.

We therefore anticipate the day will:

1. Seed and grow more or better relationships and collaborations between the public sector, academics, PhD students and artists working within Medway and Kent’s communities.
2. Explore a variety of qualitative research methods and approaches for arts interventions as ‘one size does not fit all’.
3. Ignite further action planning, with the possible creation of an Arts, Health and Wellbeing Working Group to progress possible outcomes as suggested in points 1 and 2 – in a meaningful and practical way.

 

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