Re-framing Therapeutic Arts

The role of the arts and cultural heritage in cultivating health and wellbeing has gained increasing purchase in public awareness world-wide in recent years. As part of an AHRC-funded project that explores the politics of linking health and cultural heritage, this workshop engages multiple publics – both in the UK and further afield – to explore diverse approaches to and emergent trends in improving quality of life beyond biomedicine.

With the aim of discussing key themes in the implementation of arts, cultural heritage and ‘traditional’ knowledge in healing settings in the UK and Inner Asia, this event will bring together a range of stakeholders that engage therapeutic aspects of the arts, heritage and material culture, practitioners of evidence-based Complementary and Alternative medicine, policy-related beneficiaries, and researchers to exchange knowledge and ideas.

Workshop panels will be organised around two central themes: the natural environment, and cultural heritage (tangible and intangible). Focusing on these two material and conceptual resources will help us explore how the healing arts are deployed in everyday life, how they engender meaning locally and relate to subjectivity, and the processing by which they come to be considered legitimate.

Ultimately, the workshop aims to inform and disseminate a policy briefing document for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing.