What role can art play in supporting health and wellbeing? How do notions of ‘hope’ come into play? Exploring hope through art, this article considers these questions and more, through a project born out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Check out the abstract below, and then click through to the main article to learn more:
EXPLORING HOPE THROUGH ART // Art during tough times: reflections from an art-based health promotion initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic
Peer-reviewed research by: Ilhan Abdullahi, Navneet Kaur Chana, Marco Zenone, and Paola Ardiles
With the current COVID-19 pandemic impacting communities across the globe, diverse health promotion strategies are required to address the wide-ranging challenges we face. Art is a highly engaging tool that promotes positive well-being and increases community engagement and participation. The ‘Create Hope Mural’ campaign emerged as an arts-based health promotion response to inspire dialogue on why hope is so important for Canadians during these challenging times. This initiative is a partnership between a health promotion network based in Vancouver and an ‘open air’ art museum based in Toronto. Families were invited to submit artwork online that represents the concept of hope. This paper discusses the reflections of organizers of this arts-based health promotion initiative during the early months of the pandemic in Canada. Our findings reveal the importance of decolonizing practices, centring the voices of those impacted by crisis, while being attentive to the social and political context. These learnings can be adopted by prospective health promoters attempting to use arts-based methods to address social and health inequities.
Click here to read the full open-access article, published in 2021 in the journal Global Health Promotion.
Full Reference //
Abdullahi, Ilhan, Navneet Kaur Chana, Marco Zenone, and Paola Ardiles (2021). Art during tough times: reflections from an art-based health promotion initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic. Global Health Promotion. 28 (2)
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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