CONCLUSIONS

Annalisa Cicerchia

PAGE 81

Protecting and improving the mental health and well-being of young people is a compelling duty for Member States and for the European Union. An urgent duty, but one that cannot be accomplished by emergency measures alone, but rather by a constant, long-term commitment and the mobilisation of all the valid forces. Together with the Education, Health, and Social Welfare sectors, the Cultural and Creative sectors are among these forces. They represent effective resources for improving quality of life and well-being and dealing with crises, as the recent pandemic has shown.

Strategies and plans aiming at promoting the mental health and well-being of young people, therefore, need to adopt an integrated, multidimensional, and cross-sectoral approach.

For the cultural and creative sectors, addressing the mental health and well-being of young people means in a way re-thinking their own intrinsic value. It also means addressing inequalities in access and opportunities and cultural, social, economic, and digital gaps, which have worsened since the pandemic. Cultural and artistic participative activities should be included in school curricula to make sure all young people are reached regardless of their social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Free cultural and creative activities outside school should also be promoted and funded publicly, to make sure that children and youth from families with economic difficulties can also profit from them. Creative and Cultural participation and interventions should seek to engage, connect, and empower the ecosystem of the young person. They should also include, support, and educate parents, families, friends, colleagues, teachers, etc.

Today, youth mental health and well-being pose a complex, multidimensional problem. An adequate response can only come from a plurality of policy sectors and calls for solutions that can operate across those sectors. It is argued that art and cultural programs have an established record of success in that regard, but the evidence is still insufficient. Data are scattered or limited to hardly generalizable case studies. Experiences, no matter how numerous and on the rise, are still too varied, diverse, or still too recent, to represent a solid and mature basis for establishing and sharing prerequisites, methods, and procedures.

To overcome the limitations of scientific evidence on the role of art and culture in the mental health of young people and to best apply the knowledge available on the subject, new, more intense, and systematic efforts are needed from an integration of different disciplines. Tapping all the high-quality information and data sources already available and mainstreaming them is, therefore, a priority, as well as encouraging and funding new targeted academic interdisciplinary research involving the medical, psychological, and social sciences, as well as social action research. Other advisable lines of intervention include specific cross-sectoral training and development and dissemination of techniques, methods, and tools, both for orientating and sustaining practice and for assessing impacts and sharing the evaluation outcomes. This means initiating and supporting an international learning community for deploying culture and creativity as protective, promoting, and recovery factors of youth mental health.

The specific skills and competencies of the operators, organization- and project-management models, assessment and evaluation plans, and funding schemes also require dedicated, supplementary efforts of research, experimentation, and debate. Improvisation, which sometimes accompanies some experiences born of goodwill, generosity, and enthusiasm for the cause, should be reduced to a minimum. Given the vulnerability of young people in relation to mental health, the conditions for continuity of service should be granted.

Empowerment of young people, not just their token or end-of-pipe participation, is a strategic choice that can no longer be postponed. It is essential that young people are actively and fully involved in the development of health-related and cultural and creative policies and interventions and engaged in their co-creation and management. Improving young people’s mental health, well-being, and social inclusion requires that they are given the necessary opportunities, access, and resources to have their say in the decisions that affect their lives and their fundamental rights.

Report Editor: Annalisa Cicerchia

Co-Editor Edith Wolf Perez

Writers: Chapter 1: Agnes Fogh Schmidt and Emese Kincső Páli

Chapter 2: Maria Grasso, Sonja Greiner, Mirela Hristova, Edith Wolf Perez

Chapter 3: Luciana Costa and Ferdinand Lewis

Chapter 4: Luisella Carnelli

Chapter 5: Kim Doherty.

With contributions of all members of the respective working groups

Proofreaders: Edith Wolf Perez and Else Christensen-Redzepovic

Special thanks to Voices of Culture team: Else Christensen-Redzepovic, Project Manager and Charlotte Jerie, Project Officer.

The European Commission Voices of Culture Structured Dialogue is implemented by Goethe-Institut, Brussels