THE ART4PSY PROJECT: Promoting social inclusion through art

The ART4PSY Project is exploring innovative ways of building understanding between people with severe mental health illness and the general population in order to facilitate their social inclusion, while in the same time it promotes transnational circulation of cultural and creative works produced by mental health patients. Additionally, ART4PSY supports mental health patients to explore the possibility for a career in the cultural and creative sector. Furthermore ART4PSY will promote social inclusion, fight stigma and increase public awareness of talents and skills of artists with mental health problems. The project offers mental health patients from three different countries the opportunity to coproduce “The European Theatrical Performance”. The scenario will be written by the mental health services users. Rehearsals will take place through Skype and the three theatrical groups from the different countries will work together. Artists from different countries will have the chance to collaborate with their colleagues and exchange know-how and good practices. The final theatrical performance in each country will include all three theatrical groups: one performing live and the other two on video. Subtitles will be used in order to solve the problem of the different languages. The European Theatrical Performance will be part of the ART4PSY Festival, which will take place in each country and will also include a painting and photography exhibition of artworks created by mental health patients- artists. To ensure the project’s viability/impact a Digital Library and a Toolkit will be created. The Digital Library will store and promote artwork created for the project and even more, having the ambition to become a tool used by mental health units from all over Europe. The European ART4PSY toolkit will be a useful guide for mental health professionals, having as a goal the facilitation of mental health user’s access to artistic career opportunities through counseling.

Press here in order to see the 1st newsletter of the project.