This week sees people from around the world gathering for the 5th International Arts of Good Health and Wellbeing Conference, organised by Arts and Health Australia and this year, with a fantastic contingent of people from the UK...and a positive posse of people from the North East! The first event today, saw Mike White from the Centre for Medical Humanities, facilitate the 3rd Critical Mass event. This brings together international collaborators from the field - artists, researchers, health managers and educators - to explore synergies and collaboration. Evidence of previous partnerships include the joint work between DADAA (Australia) and First Movement (Derbyshire) and the publication of a special edition of Arts & Health: An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice dedicated to international perspectives in community based arts and health. In today’s session we focused on the question: What could produce effective international collaboration in practice and research in community based arts and health? Participants came from countries including amongst others, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA and the UK.
Tomorrow, the conference kicks off in earnest and I'll be doing my bit with Fiction-Non-Fiction. More on that very soon.
...C.P.
