Recommendations

of institutions, in support of youth mental health. The need for multi-sectoral collaboration has been further underlined by recent developments at the policy level that set the stage for arts-based interventions in support of youth mental health.9

Any innovative framework for integrating culture and creativity across sectors and dimensions of well-being will need to organise stakeholders according to their spheres of influence – local, regional, global. Local stakeholders include those who have direct contact with the target group, including caregivers, friends, health professionals, teachers, others. Meanwhile, organisations influencing policy making and resource distribution operate at the regional level, and it is here that alliances between cultural and health sectors can be fostered, for instance. Finally, in the outermost ring of the ecology are the global networks of institutions that act to promote deeper, more expansive, and consistent change. This diagram shows how certain actors cut across the spheres of influence, for example communication and social media, commercial industries, and others. Those influences across the spheres suggest barriers to collaboration as well as opportunities for collaborative partnerships.

Recommendations

Steps to build a stable and durable collaboration among relevant sectors

Addressing the current crises will require making positive, strategic impacts on the mental health of young people, through integrated multidimensional efforts across sectors such as health, social welfare, education, employment, and justice among others. Culture and creativity programmes are already exploring this way of working, and those efforts could be expanded. Below are two recommendations regarding the development of sustainable collaboration between the cultural & creative sector and other sectors, to foster strategic synergies.

Recommendation 1: Culture and creativity programmes should be deployed to promote the inclusion and empowerment of youth in policy making regarding its mental health. This intervention in the current crisis should also lay the groundwork for the future well-being of youth, including not only mental health but also economic, social and physical. Culture and creativity should be integrated into the other dimensions of well-being by which policies, communities and interventions are evaluated.

9 Health 2020: a European policy framework supporting action across government and society for health and well-being. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2013 (EUR/RC62/9; http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0006/199536/ Health2020-Short.pdf?ua=1). 61