[Announce] CULTURAL ACTION FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH

[announce-admin at comm-org.utoledo.edu]

From: Daniel Ng <daniel.ng at uts.edu.au>


CULTURAL ACTION FOR
COMMUNITY HEALTH

December 13th and 14th, 2001
North Melbourne Town Hall

A two-day forum Convened by the Cultural Development 
Network, Victoria and the Centre for Popular Education, UTS 
and supported by the City of Melbourne and the Australia 
Council for the Arts.  


CONFERENCE THEMES

* Art and community cultural development

* Art and mental health promotion

* Art and health promotion in community settings

* Art and health care in institutional settings

* Art and youth suicide prevention

* Art and AIDS education


______________________________________________

CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST TO PRESENT 
PAPERS.

The forum program is already, fairly full but we do welcome 
further expressions of interest. At this stage all you need to do 
is to indicate your interest to lead a workshop or participate in 
a panel session. Please contact Rick.Flowers at uts.edu.au by 
August 16th. Shortly thereafter Rick will get back to you and 
the details of any proposal can then be negotiated.  

This forum is part of a wider effort to foster more research 
about the possibilities for community arts to address health 
and social issues. We are interested to undertake evaluative 
studies of the contributions artists can make to community 
health practice. We are interested to learn about studies that 
have already been undertaken. Should you be interested to 
connect with the research effort please contact 
Rick.Flowers at uts.edu.au or tel. 02-9340 4386.  

We plan to produce a publication of edited papers by the end 
of next year that are associated with the forum. We are 
interested to actively work with contributing writers over this 
period. This means that we'd be available to exchange drafts 
with you. We could interview you to get the ball rolling and 
send you a report or transcipt of the interview. We intend to 
suggest questions and themes that might be addressed. In 
particular we are interested in papers that discuss the 
complexities of evaluating cultural action for commmunity 
health.  

______________________________________________


Community arts activities play an important role in Australian 
health care and community development settings. Yet there is 
limited information about the nature, outcomes and theories of 
this practice. This forum responds to a need to strengthen 
research about the outcomes of community cultural 
development for health and wellbeing. At this forum we will 
have:  

*  practitioners and researchers describing and reflecting on 
ways in which art and community cultural development 
practice promotes health and wellbeing.  

* opportunities for health care professionals to learn about, 
and to critically question, outcomes of community arts 
practice in health  

* researchers from the fields of health, the arts, and 
community development working together, particularly with a 
view to advancing research and evaluation practices.  

The growing interest in arts for health is reflected in an 
increasing amount of conference activity. There is a well-
established arts strand in the Annual National Rural Health 
Alliance conference. A few arts practitioners will be presenting 
at the forthcoming annual Public Health Association 
conference. On Sept. 5th there will be one day forum in 
Sydney - Creative Practice for Health Education and 
Community Development (contact cpe at uts.edu.au for detail). 
In October 2002 an international conference will be convened 
by The Arts for Health Research Centre in Sydney - 'Arts, 
Health & Design' (contact 
Marily.Cintra at placemaking.com.au).