Innovative inclusive arts practice to combat cognitive decline and rebuild resilience in the community
In the spirit of the late, indomitable Baroness Sally Greengross, founder patron of Arts 4 Dementia and Change Maker par excellence, our Global Arts for Brain Health Conversations will open our eyes and mind to wide-ranging creative health practice around the world, how from the start of symptoms of a potential dementia and ongoing, the voices of those living the experience of diagnosis, the challenges they face and how they surmount them using creativity and learning to preserve brain health – for example, how taking up or persevering with arts activity can enable people with young onset to continue study, work and volunteer.
How global social prescribing facilitates access and social change, their medical and neuroscience student champions joining arts students to learn with participants, adapting to cognitive impairment, building resilience, and preserving their brain health through creative engagement and mutual discovery.
Kay Allen OBE, Director, explains Age Irrelevance’s mission to harness the power of collaboration to mobilise and equip others to become influential age irrelevant change makers. Brian Lawlor discusses the Global Brain Health Institute of Dublin and California’s strategies, policies and interventions to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of people with dementia and of their care partners. Christopher Bailey, Arts and Health Lead at the World Health Organisation, shares international strategies. Bogdan Chiva Giurca, who as a medical student set up the Social Prescribing Student Champion Scheme that is now extending across the world in association with the Global Social Prescribing Alliance, explains how medical students – the generation of today, and the future doctors of tomorrow are now learning about, teaching, and promoting Social Prescribing around the world. Oliver Graber, Dean of the Faculty of Music and Head of the Research Institute for Music Medicine at the Jam Music Lab University in Vienna, discusses their musical strategies for dementia, a subject close to Sally’s heart. Kunle Adewale pioneered the Arts in Medicine Fellowship to provide … in Nigeria and now throughout the African continent?
KAY ALLEN OBE FCIPD FRSA is Campaign Director for Age Irrelevance. Previously Kay’s career included Royal Mail Group, BSkyB and B&Q, her work has focused on change management, customer solutions and employee engagement. Previously Kay has served as a Commissioner on both the Disability Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She has over thirty years’ experience in supporting strategic partnerships between corporates and social enterprises looking for innovative solutions that have a positive impact on society. Kay is a Fellow of St Georges House Windsor.
CHRISTOPHER BAILEY is the Arts and Health Lead at the World Health Organization and a co-founder of the Jameel Arts and Health Lab. The lab focuses on the evidence base for the health benefits of the arts by building up a global network of research centres to look at effective practice as well as the foundational science of why the arts may benefit physical, mental and social wellbeing, to support underserved communities around the world. Through its Healing Arts activities, the program also engages with the global media to promote pro-health messaging and build solidarity on health issues through all media. Educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities as well as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, after a career as a professional actor and playwright, Bailey joined the Rockefeller Foundation as their Research Manager, and from there was recruited to WHO where he lead the Health Informatics work and later their on-line communications team before starting the Arts and Health program. As an ambassador for the field, Bailey has also performed original pieces such as Stage 4: Cancer and the Imagination, and The Vanishing Point: A journey into Blindness and Perception, in venues around the world, from the Hamwe Festival in Rwanda, to the Wellcome Collection in London, to the World Bank in DC, as well as Lincoln Center in NY, the LA Opera, LACMA, and Warner Bros Studios in LA, and the Conservatory of Music in San Francisco, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Budapest Opera and the Kennedy Center among many others. The basic message of his work is to amplify the WHO definition of health which states that health is not merely the absence of disease and infirmity, but the attainment of the highest level of physical, mental and social wellbeing.
BRIAN LAWLOR is a professor of old age psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, and Site Director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity. He is a geriatric psychiatrist with an interest in dementia, late-life depression, loneliness and brain health. Brian has worked for over thirty years on developing services and delivering care to people with dementia. His research interests range from early detection and prevention to evaluating new treatments for dementia.
DR BOGDAN CHIVA GIURCA is a British physician, leading the Global Social Prescribing Alliance, initiated by England’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in collaboration with WHO, United Nations, World Health Innovation Summit, and NHS England. He is the Clinical Champion Lead at the National Academy for Social Prescribing and founder of the NHS England Social Prescribing Champion Scheme. His work has influenced national and international healthcare policy, facilitating social prescribing adoption in over 15 countries and integrating it into UK universities’ curricula. Bogdan also teaches at Imperial College London, collaborates with Harvard Global Health Institute, and was recognized in HSJ100’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Health (UK, 2022).
KUNLE ADEWALE, a Multimedia Artist, Curator, Cultural Producer, Mental Health Advocate, and Arts in Health Practitioner based in Manchester, United Kingdom, graduated from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He is the founder of the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship, an organization that trains students and professionals across disciplines, cultures, and generations in utilizing creativity and collaboration for good health and well-being. His Fellowship has trained over 1000 persons from Africa, Asia, Latin, and South America, and Europe to bring positive change to their immediate community. Kunle is an Atlantic Fellow For Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, University of California San Francisco. The City of Cincinnati celebrates Kunle Adewale Day on 2 August each year. In 2022, Kunle was endorsed by the Arts Council England as a Global Talent Exceptional Leader. He is a cohort member of the WHO Arts Practice and Ethics of Care project, a steering committee member of Jameel Arts & Health Lab. He is the Curator and the Global Development Lead for the Global South & Arts Health Week.
DR OLIVER GRABER is Dean of the faculty of Music and head of the Head of Research Institute for Music Medicine, Jam Music Lab University in Vienna Internationally active as a composer, pianist, dramaturge and author, he taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (music effects research) and was dramaturg of the Vienna State Ballet. With his digital system solution “Ludwig Med” he provides current contributions to computer-assisted functional composition for clinical use in intensive care units; As founder and Co-Director of the JAM MUSIC LAB, he is responsible for the artistic area of the new Institute for Music Medicine, which he set up in collaboration with the physician Klaus-Felix Laczika.
VERONICA FRANKLIN GOULD, President, founded the charity Arts 4 Dementia in 2011 to develop weekly learning and participation programmes at cultural venues, to re-energise and inspire people above early symptoms of dementia, with a website signposting arts opportunities for dementia nationwide. She worked with Dementia UK to devise training and insight for arts facilitators, and with universities to provide best-practice conferences and reports. Her inaugural A4D Reawakening the Mind programme(2012-13) won the London 2012 Inspire Mark and Positive Breakthrough in Mental Health Dementia Award 2013 and she was 2014 Sunday Times Changemaker finalist. On publication of Music Reawakening(2015), she was appointed A4D president. Her regional guide Reawakening Integrated: Arts & Heritage (2017) mapping arts opportunities for dementia aligns arts within NHS England’s Well Pathway for Dementia. Her social prescribing campaign (2019-23) encourages professionals to empower people to access wide-ranging arts from the outset of symptoms, to preserve their Brain Health, with practice disseminated in A.R.T.S. for Brain Health: Social Prescribing as Peri-Diagnostic Practice for Dementia (2021). Her Global Social Prescribing: The A4D Arts for Brain Health Debates involved speakers and delegates from 40 countries around the world. Veronica is on the board of Arts in Medicine and The Amber Trust.
