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. Yet in South Africa, artists’ health and wellbeing are seldom considered, marginally researched, and poorly resourced, despite high prevalence of artists’ mental and physical occupational health disorders. There is also 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. While expertise and research exist in isolated specialities, coordinated and integrated translational research across health, arts, and performance is lacking.
HAPI will synergise, connect, support, and develop transdisciplinary research, applications, and interventions for health promotion in and through the performing and creative arts. The core value, health in the arts for health of the nation, underscores four underpinning domains:
· Health and wellbeing in the creative and performing arts
· Performance science
· Health promotion through the arts
· Medical and health humanities
Core Team Members:
- Ms Amelda Brand
- Uné Conradie
- Dr. Susan de Klerk
- Prof. Mario Nell
- Dr. Karolien Perold-Bull
- Dr. Bridget Rennie-Salonen
- Mariam Salie
- Prof. Kathryn Smith
- 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
- Spieel Arts Therapies Collective