National Alliance for Museums, Health & Wellbeing

The National Alliance for Museums, Health & Wellbeing has now merged with the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing to become the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance. Their new website is coming in March 2019 and can be accessed here.

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Give: Volunteering for Wellbeing project secures National Lottery support

UCL, on behalf of the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance, has received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund – thanks to National Lottery players – for an exciting project Give: Volunteering for Wellbeing, to work in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, Horniman Museum and Gardens, and Valence House.

The project will make heritage more accessible to people experiencing heath inequality. Working with our three partner organisations new volunteering programmes will connect people and help open up hidden and unused museum collections to more people.

This project forms part of the work of the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance, a new Arts Council Sector Support Organisation formed by the merger of the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing and the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing. By supporting these museums to pilot sustainable collections-led volunteering focused on wellbeing we will:

• At a community level – use our networks and knowledge of best practice to enable a wider range of people to volunteer with their local museum to support their personal wellbeing and be inspired by the organisation’s collections
• Organisational level – through our training and evaluation help museums to understand how they can embed collections-led volunteering for wellbeing and support a wider range of people in the future.
• National level – undertake sector-wide mapping of volunteering for wellbeing. This will be combined with learning about the role of collections in improving the wellbeing of volunteers and use this learning to inspire and support other museums nation-wide to undertake this work.

Prof Helen Chatterjee, (Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance, Co-Founder and Board member) based at University College London said: ‘We are thrilled to have received this award and very excited to work with three of London’s finest museums. We are very grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Lottery players for supporting this exciting initiative’

Liz Ellis, Policy Adviser, Communities and Diversity, Heritage Lottery Fund said: “The Heritage Lottery Fund recognises the crucial role volunteering has in connecting us with each other and building sustainable wellbeing. This project will demonstrate the significant opportunities ahead for individual volunteers, local communities and heritage organisations to work together to embed improved wellbeing into museum practice.”

See the Give our heritage HLF project press release for further details.

Free online course Museums as spaces for wellbeing

The Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing will launch a free online course: Museums as spaces for wellbeing. Available from 29 June 2018. Funded by Arts Council England and Wellcome.

This course is aimed at providing advice, tools and guidance on the steps to take in order to develop, deliver and evaluate health and wellbeing work within a museum, heritage or cultural organisation.

It is aimed at sector professionals and anyone interested in health and wellbeing work in museum, heritage, or cultural organisations. It will be useful for those who have yet to undertake work in this area or are already doing so but would like support in certain aspects of their provision.

The course has six modules:

1. An introduction to health and wellbeing
2. Partnership and co-creation
3. Types of audiences and activities
4. Measuring impact
5. Organisational change
6. Next steps

Each module takes 1-1.5 hours to complete and contains case study films, useful resources and recommended further reading as well as exercises so you can reflect on your own learning and apply it to your own practice.

You can enrol at any time (after 29 June) by visiting here.

Webinar series

Now available our final webinar Core principles of social prescribing and its impact on health and wellbeing and can be accessed here. Presented by Dr Marie Polley co-chair of the Social Prescribing Network.

Our four webinars in the series of five are now available:
Museums, health and wellbeing – methodologies for measuring impact presented by Professor Helen Chatterjee from UCL and Dr Nuala Morse from the University of Leicester. Can be accessed here

Opportunities for arts on prescriptions to improve health inequalities – A health sector perspective presented by Byron Johnson-Brown from Healthy London Partnership. Can be accessed here

Working with art therapists by Ali Coles (Lecturer in Art Psychotherapy, University of South Wales and Art Psychotherapist, 2gether NHS Foundation Trust). Can be accessed here

Sporting heritage, health and wellbeing by Justine Reilly from the Sporting Heritage Network. Can be accessed here

Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing: A Second Report from the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing

Our second report has now been launched and is available to download: Museums as spaces for wellbeing a second report.

It explores in greater depth the development of museums, health and wellbeing work and is based on findings from a second sector-wide survey and other consultation including our 2017 regional training events.

Part 1 illustrates a wide range of creative and innovative provision through case studies. It is organised in six sections to show how the heritage sector is responding creatively to a cultural and policy-making landscape undergoing rapid transformation consequent upon: demographic changes, the cumulative effects of entrenched health inequalities, the growing importance of ‘green wellbeing’ and other key areas.

Part 2 reports in more general terms on how the sector is meeting organisational opportunities and challenges in five areas: new audiences, partnership, evaluation, organisational change and funding.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the report especially those organisations who submitted case studies.

Museums and wellbeing week and third conference

Presentations from the conference can be found below:

Emma Hanson – Wellbeing, isolation and museums

Jane Povey – Enabling creative approaches to wellbeing

Alex Coulter and Helen Chatterjee – Launch of the new Alliance

Zoe Brown – Well embedded

Charlotte Smith and Gaby Porter – Integrating wellbeing in our work

Helen Chatterjee and Nuala Morse – Methodologies for measuring impact

Rosie Barker – Starting from scratch

Final quick fire presentations

Laura Bedford – Coming soon

Our third Museums for Health and Wellbeing conference took place on 13 March. The programme for the day can be found here: Third Museums for Health and Wellbeing Conference Programme. The new Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance was officially launched at the conference. For more information about the new Alliance which is a merger between National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing and the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing please read Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance launch. You can join the new Alliance by visiting the website here.

Thanks to everyone who took part in Museums and Wellbeing Week which took place between 12-18 March 2018. More information can be found about what took place here.

Future Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance announced

The National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing and the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing are pleased to announce that from April 2018 we will be merging to become a new Sector Support Organisation, the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA). Funded by Arts Council England as part of the National Portfolio Fund 2018-2022, the new organisation will be led by Arts & Health South West. For further information see the press release CHWA Press release FINAL.

All Party Parliamentary Working Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing report published

During 2015–17, the APPGAHW conducted an Inquiry into practice and research in the arts in health and social care, with a view to making recommendations to improve policy and practice. The Alliance was involved in chairing a round table on museums and health in 2016 which informed the report which can be found here.

The Museums for Health and Wellbeing report outlining our research findings can be downloaded here.

SECOND MUSEUMS FOR HEALTH & WELLBEING CONFERENCE

The second national conference of the National Alliance for Museums, Health & Wellbeing was held at the Thackray Museum, Leeds on 6 March 2017. Second Museums for Health and Wellbeing Conference Programme

Presentations from the conference can be found below:

Jo Ward – Meeting the Challenges

Chris Easton – More than Medicine

Marie Polley – Social Prescribing and its Role in Health and Wellbeing

Kirklees Museums and Galleries – Volunteer+Culture=Wellbeing

Yorkshire Museums Trust – Mind over Matter

THE FIRST MUSEUMS FOR HEALTH & WELLBEING CONFERENCE

Was held on 2 March 2016, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester

Museums for Health and Wellbeing Conference Programme

Presentations

Gregor Henderson, PHE – Curating for Wellbeing

Simon Chaplin, Wellcome Trust – Wellbeing and the cultural contexts of health

Helen Chatterjee and Krisztina Lackoi, NAMHW – Museums and wellbeing work in the UK

Roseann Logan and Chris Gourley – Fostering a wellbeing centred culture of care

Jeremy Kimmel, Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery – Partnerships for Wellbeing

Conference delegates during the Object handling for Wellbeing breakout session, photograph (c) Andy Ford

         

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