Health, Arts & Performance Initiative (HAPI)
The performing, creative, and healing arts are vital for societal and individual wellbeing, health promotion, social cohesion, and positive social change. In South Africa (SA) there is a need to bolster the social impact of the arts; advance arts-for-health and arts-science research; build context-relevant capacity in the therapeutic creative arts, as well as in arts in health and community arts practices. There is also a need for health promotion within the arts: SA artists’ health and wellbeing are seldom considered, marginally researched, and poorly resourced, despite high prevalence of artists’ mental and physical occupational health disorders. While expertise and research exist in isolated specialities, coordinated and integrated translational research across health, arts, and performance is lacking. Driven by the core value, health in the arts for health of the nation, HAPI will synergise, connect, support, and develop transdisciplinary research, applications, and interventions for health promotion in and through the performing and creative arts, delineated by four operational streams:
| Health promotion IN the arts | Health promotion THROUGH the arts |
| Health and Well-being in the Creative and Performing Arts: Artists’ Occupational health and Sustained Creativity | Creative and Performing Arts for Promoting Health and Well- being: Therapeutic and Community Arts |
| Science, Art, and Performance: Optimising Performance in Multiple Domains, and Promoting Arts-Science Research | Creative and Performing Arts in Medicine: Medical Education and Research, and the Medical and Health Humanities |
Core Team Members:
Dr. Bridget Rennie-Salonen (HAPI lead)
Ms Amelda Brand
Mrs. Uné Conradie
Dr. Susan de Klerk
Prof. Mario Nell
Dr. Karolien Perold-Bull
Ms. Cassidy Robinson
Ms. Mariam Salie
Prof. Kathryn Smith
Mrs. Marlize Swanepoel
Faculty / School / Department / Institution represented:
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Music
Department of Visual Arts
Department of Drama
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
Department of Exercise, Sport, and Lifestyle Medicine
Department of Health Rehabilitation Sciences
sp(i)eel Arts Therapies Collective