What we do

• We facilitate the use of the Arts and Culture as tools: for promoting health and preventing illness; as supports for treatment trajectories and in relationships.
• We promote and support the spread of Culture and Health for the purpose of: knowledge, research and specialized training; the development of projects and good practices by sharing existing opportunities and generating favorable new conditions.
• We stimulate dialogue and cooperation between: the sectors of culture, of social assistance and health care with a view to enhancing social quality and sustainable development.

Current Activities

1. Call for Case Studies – Operators and experts on the topic are invited to submit experiences and innovative projects that have been developed and implemented in Switzerland with the support of innovative methodologies and drawing on evidence based results.
2. Course “Culture and Health” – from October to December, for seven Mondays, leading figures from the world of culture will converse with professors from USI Faculty of Biomedical Sciences on the many aspects proposed by international experts that link culture to health. The seven thematic evenings, open to the public and medical students (with recognition of 1 ECTS), will take place from Monday, 18 October to Monday, 6 December in the USI East Campus multipurpose hall from 6 pm to 7:30 pm.
   https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/16880

Future Activities

• Cultura e Salute, alleanza per un futuro sostenibile, November 26-27, 2021 – Switzerland’s first forum on the topic during which scientific evidence and the best international practices will be presented which will stimulate debate and comparison.
• Support Fund – in support of partnership projects involving artists and health care structures in order to develop cultural activities that take place at sites where health care is provided.

Activities Completed

• Cultura e Salute. Connessi per accorciare le distanze – an event about Culture in the time of Covid-19 whose aim was to discuss and consider the lessons learned from the emergency during the Giornate digitali svizzere. The focus was on the increase in digital cultural productions and how these were used during the lockdown, as well as on the changes underway in cultural policy, on cultural supply and demand and on recent developments in artistic exploration.
  https://digitaldays.swiss/it/programm/connected-to-shorten-distances
  https://www.ibsafoundation.org/en/activities/culture-and-health/connected-to-shorten-distances
• Cultura e Salute. Connessi per accorciare le distanze – An “aggregator” of digital cultural activities providing a selection of local and international offerings that emerged as a reply to the closing down of cultural institutions by the pandemic. The aim was to shorten the distances between the public, cultural centres and artists, while keeping dialogue alive and highlighting how meaningful the social and emotional aspect of cultural experience is even when it is digital, while waiting for the institutions to open again.
  https://culturaesalute.ch
• Words that Heal – an open air exhibition on display in the streets of Lugano to help people project their gaze onto nature and the streets that are coming back to life. Forty-five writers – poets and narrators from Italian Switzerland including personalities from the Swiss theatre world –offered unpublished excerpts or passages taken from their recent works which appeared on posters put up in various neighborhoods in order to help the “resurgence of life” after weeks of quarantine.
  https://www.lugano.ch/la-mia-citta/progetti-e-campagne/campagne/parole_curano