In today’s fast-paced world, people everywhere face challenges like mental illness, loneliness, and isolation. Engaging with arts and culture can inspire and connect us, fostering resilience, confidence, well-being, and overall health.
The 2024 Culture and Well-being Forum, organised by Cluj Cultural Centre on 27-28 October, explored social prescribing as an opportunity to integrate culture, social, and health efforts to provide holistic approaches to individual and community health and resilience. Social prescribing is an innovative practice whereby doctors, social workers, psychologists, or educators can recommend participation in cultural activities to their patients/beneficiaries to improve their health and psycho-social conditions.
About 75 experts and specialists from public institutions, artists, cultural workers, psychologists, public health specialists, social workers, and doctors with a common interest in the area of intersection between culture, health, and social inclusion attended this edition of the forum.
A key focus of the forum was the presentation of findings from the study “The Opportunity for Developing and Implementing a Socio-Cultural Prescriptions Mechanism in Romania,” initiated by the Romanian Economic and Social Council. Building on this study, forum discussions centred on implementing such a system within Romania. Several models from Europe and across the world were showcased to understand the diversity of mechanisms and the way they respond to their local contexts of implementation, to lead the conversation deeper into Romania’s particularities, foreseen struggles and potential solutions.
Besides the panel discussions, the event included a dance and well-being workshop led by choreographer Cosmin Manolescu, and a performance, Cancer, choreographed, both exploring the link between artistic expression, health and well-being. The workshop was an invitation for participants to get familiar with movement and closeness, expanding or challenging their comfort zones with moments of touch, stillness, rhythm and breath. The performance, written by Cătălina Florescu and directed by Cosmin Manolescu, featured a chorus of dancers and testimonies from individuals who have experienced cancer. Intense and incredibly moving, the experience offered the audience an inside perspective on cancer’s impact on the bodies and minds of women.
The Culture and Well-Being Forum is an annual event organised by Cluj Cultural Centre since 2018, bringing together political decision-makers and culture and health professionals in Europe to discuss practices, opportunities for public policy, and joint action with the view to activating the power of the arts for health and well-being.
Photo credits: ©Roland Váczi
