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Focus: Mental Health of the Young
parents and carers should be offered an opportunity to follow the interventions to gain a deeper understanding of the process. “Adults too need to have an opportunity to learn, change and heal alongside children for mental health outcomes to improve, for the cycles of trauma to be broken, and for children and future generations to thrive and flourish.” (The Baring Foundation 2020: 61)
The method and management of the interventions need to be context-related. In devising programs for youth, young artists should also be involved in the design. The leading team should represent the participant’s group, i.e. in terms of gender and ethnicity.
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Supervision and counselling of leading artists are advisable, especially in clinical settings (care for the carers). Arts and health organisations should also provide regular CPD (continuous professional development) for Arts and Health as well as Community Arts interventions.
And finally, information about the role cultural activities can have on mental health needs to be included in the curricula of all those who work with children and young people.
Focus: Mental Health of the Young
As already stated, there is ample evidence that the last two years of the pandemic have severely affected the mental health and well-being needs of young people. An indication prioritise young people’s (mental) health is the initiative of WHO: #youth4health.
Also, the cultural sector has been hit hard by closures and financial losses and seems to be responding only gradually to the new challenges young people are facing. At the same time, arts programs for young people that have been running pre-pandemic are resumed and should now be recognized as interventions for mental health. As mentioned before, they may not address specific issues. However, through evaluations of the well-being of the participants, we know about the positive effects on mental health.
The legacy of the crises should be that the arts have the power to improve our well-being and to be a valid tool for prevention as well as for crisis intervention. With the experience of the last few years, arts programs should be devised flexibly to be accessible to a range of target groups.
