Launch

The second international conference on culture, health and wellbeing will take place in Bristol next June. Building on the success of the first conference in 2013, it will showcase inspirational practice, policy and the latest research and will focus on the role of arts and creativity in healing, care and wellbeing across the life course.

An online project exploring creative representations of living with long-term physical pain is seeking contributions and feedback.

The galleries show different people’s experience of their condition and viewers are invited to view these and share your thoughts or ask questions in response, no specialist knowledge or experience is required!

www.exhibitingpain.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/groups/exhibitingpain/

Public Health England has published its strategic plan for the next four years focusing on reducing health inequalities.

The plan examines how changes in public health funding will be rolled out and how PHE will try to ensure these are fair across the country. It also includes a role for new technology and changes in how health interventions are delivered locally.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-health-england-strategic-plan

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has launched an inquiry into the ways in which arts organisations can be better supported to play a stronger role in their communities and nationally.

New York city’s largest performing arts centre, Lincoln Center, and NewYork-Presbyterian, one of the city’s biggest hospitals have announced a new collaboration making NewYork-Presbyterian the Official Hospital of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA). It is the first time LCPA has designated a hospital as a wellness sponsor.

Public Health England and NHS England have published a guide calling on health commissioners to engage more with local community and volunteer groups to improve people’s health. The guide says commissioners should “use the family of community-centred approaches as a tool to consider potential options for commissioning health improvement and preventive services”.

A new report by the New Economics Foundation sets out a new model of public services utilising arts and cultural organisations in preventing harm and reducing people’s need for acute services.

The report notes that arts and cultural organisations have long been overlooked by commissioners of public services because commissioning can often be focused on more traditional models of service provision, and procurement documents can be so highly specified that they leave little room for innovation in how organisations meet the outcomes that people and commissioners want.

A reading list of 35 books selected by mental health experts and young people has been launched with the aim of supporting young people’s mental health. Part of the Reading Well Books on Prescription scheme the list aims to provide 13-18 year-olds with a wide range of self-help and information titles, as well as memoir, graphic novels and fiction.

The Government’s Leadership for Libraries Taskforce has published a toolkit for communities and local authorities looking to establish community libraries. While the Taskforce does not endorse community managed libraries, the toolkit is to show examples of how local community groups can be involved in running libraries.

The Government has promised to respond to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts Health and Wellbeing’s recommendations for the role of culture in health and wellbeing when the results of the APPG’s inquiry is published next year. In the recently published Culture White Paper, the Government sets out a range of pledges to elevate the role of culture in supporting health and wellbeing. The National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing was instrumental in establishing the APPG in 2014 and provides the secretariat for the APPG in its current inquiry.