Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region

Odense Municipality is lead partner for an EU Interreg Baltic Sea project entitled: “Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region”. Arts on Prescription (AoP) in the Baltic Sea Region 2023-2025 will be developed in collaboration with twelve other partners from seven countries within the Baltic Sea Region.

The project will address public authorities challenges when it comes to planning and implementing AoP programmes.

These challenges often occur due to underdeveloped collaboration and cooperation between culture and health sectors, lack of knowledge on how to set up, organise and evaluate innovation programmes such as AoP and financial challenges in gaining long-term financing to secure sustainability of AoP programmes.

The aim of the AoP in the Baltic Sea Region project is to provide key provisions of setting up the Arts on Prescription Programmes by project partners. The target group of the AoP Programme are decisionmakers, key employees and other stakeholders who are responsible for piloting and adapting the AoP Programme locally within the project term.

The AoP Programme concept has been developed in a co-creative process by all project partners to ensure the relevance of the Programme to the region. The AoP Programme is generic and:

reflects state-of-the-art in AoP research and practice;
is closely aligned with AoP programmes that have already been tested and implemented in other countries such as Denmark, Sweden and the UK;
is transferable and adaptable to local context in the piloting countries of the project “AoP in the Baltic Sea Region”.

The AoP Programme will be piloted in 2023-2024 and consist of three piloting cycles in Denmark, Poland, Latvia, Germany, and Sweden. The piloting programmes will be evaluated for organisational set-up, health effects and economic cost effectiveness, by partners from the National Institute of Public Health - University of Southern Denmark, Turku University of Applied Science, and the Lithuanian University of Health Science.

Additionally, the project partners will be developing an “Arts on Prescription Practitioners Guide” to guide others in setting up, developing, and facilitating AoP programmes. The guide will be used by piloting partners and adjusted after each piloting cycle from lessons learnt in planning and implementing the local AoP programmes. The online AoP Practitioners Guide will be made widely available to all those interested in AoP programmes concept ultimo 2025.

Arts on Prescription

AoP is a concept that has already been tested as small-scale programmes in countries such as UK, Sweden, and Denmark. The concept is that people with mental health issues such as depression, stress or anxiety, or people at risk of developing such conditions, receive a prescription, not for medicine or therapy but for taking part in regular culture and art activities in group settings. This has been proven to have a positive effect on mental health.

Collaboration

Northern Dimension Partnership on health and Social Well-being Secretariat (NDPHS). The NDPHS has direct access to senior officials of the national ministries of health and can help to raise awareness and put AoP on the political agenda.

Funding

Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2021-2027 and Co-funded by the European Union.
Read more on Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region here https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/arts-on-prescription/

Project period

1.1.2023 - 31.12.2025

Project Managing and Contacts at Odense Municipality

Project Manager Stine Keiding, ske@odense.dk
Project Coordinator Millie Kealy-Jensen, mmake@odense.dk