A presentation by Nelli Koivisto and Helena Malmivirta at the "Sustainable Creativity in Healthcare" conference in Belfast,North-Ireland May 17th 2012

1. Art Evolving into a Languange,
Discovering Lost Stories
Helena Malmivirta, City of Salo
Nelli Koivisto, Aalto University
FINLAND
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2. A National European Social Fund
Programme
”The Third Sector Art & Culture, Youth and Sport Organisations
Providing Wellbeing Services” 2007 – 2013
Ministry of Education and Culture
Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment in Lapland

3. Our presentation
Part One
Nelli Koivisto:
Overview of Service Models in the ESF programme:
Art & Culture for Wellbeing
Part Two
Helena Malmivirta:
Project DIMPLES
Inter-professional Companionships in Wellbeing Services
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4. Overview of Service Models:
Art & Culture for Wellbeing
Nelli Koivisto, Master of Arts in Dance, Master of Education
Aalto University, Small Business Center
Project manager, Coordination project THE THIRD SOURCE
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5. Art & Culture
for Wellbeing:
The Actors
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6. Regional Dance and Film Centers
Art and Culture Folk Music Association
CONCERT CENTER… Music Institute
Associations Performing Arts Associations
Word Art Associations
Circus Schools and Centers
VISUAL ARTISTS’ ASSOCIATIONS

7. Voluntary associations
Professional artists’
associations

8. The Professional Artists
VISUAL artists… Media artists… WORD artists…
MUSICIANS… Music educators
Circus instructors… Dancers and choreographers
THEATER professionals… Puppeteers

9. Together with…
Intellectually
Immigrant Children and Youth Disabled Children
Families in Social Care
People Suffering
Hospital Patients from Dementia
Young People
Inter-Generational Recovering from
Groups Seniors in
Substance Addiction
Geriatric Care

10. Service Contents
and Methods
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11. The Premise
In art & culture for wellbeing:
Art is a tool for achieving objectives that go beyond
artistic goals
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12. Arts & Culture in Wellbeing Services
• Music
• Dance
• Plays
• Circus
• Visual Arts
• Stories and Poems
• Radio Plays, Short Films, Audio-visual Recordings
• Reminiscing
• Handicrafts
• Cooking
• Traditional Plays and Games

13. Forms of Activities
Open activity Excursions
Group and club activities Camps
Courses Performances
Workshops Communal productions
Events Visits
Discussions Occupational therapist – Artist creative
Artist mentors in care institutions partnerships

14. The
Partnership
Model
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15. In Municipal Structures
HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE • Day care / kindergarten
• Health centre / hospital
• Home for the elderly
• Family work
• Foster care
EDUCATION • Basic and special education
• Art education
• Adult education centre
CULTURAL SERVICES • Children’s cultural network
• Municipal cultural centre
• Art education projects
• Museum, Orchestra
YOUTH SERVICES • Youth centre
• Searching youth work

16. FINANCER
Local Authority in
ART Education
€
ASSOCIATION
WELLBEING
SERVICE:
Circus for
Children with
Special Needs
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17. FINANCER
Local Authority in
ART Education
€
ASSOCIATION
PARTNER
WELLBEING A Local School €
SERVICE:
Circus for
Children with
Special Needs
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18. FINANCER
Local Authority in €
ART Education
ASSOCIATION
PARTNER
WELLBEING A Local School €
SERVICE:
Circus for
Children with
Special Needs USERS
Student Group €
Identified by the
School
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19. User
Experiences
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20. Dimensions in Art & Culture
for Wellbeing
EFFECTS ON
EXPERIENCES
Self-esteem
ACTIVITY Insights Body control
Success Self-knowledge
Observing Feeling of inclusion Personal wellbeing
ART-BASED Discussing Atmosphere of equality
METHODS Breaking down barriers
Experimenting Finding new perspectives Having control on one’s life
Making & Doing Getting positive attention Capacity for daily routines
Performing Cutting loose from roles Ability to learn new skills
Experiencing Finding motivation Re-organisation of roles
Interpreting Sense of Equality Mutual trust
Joy Social skills

21. HYMYKUOPAT - HANKE
Tähän otsikkoa tähän otsikkoa
tähän otsikkoa Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….
Project DIMPLES
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
Inter-professional Partnerships in Wellbeing Services
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta tekstiä….Ja sitten muuta tekstiä…. Ja sitten muuta
October 2009 – September 2012
Helena Malmivirta, Doctor of Education
Project manager, City of Salo

22. Objective:
To strengthen third sector culture and art organisations’ capacities to develop and
deliver wellbeing services
Starting point:
To meet the needs of local authorities with art and culture based services and
service models
In Cooperation with:
Five Finnish cities: Salo, Turku, Kouvola, Forssa and Hankasalmi
Ten local and regional art and culture associations
A Pilot Project in the National ESF Programme:
The Third Sector Art & Culture, Youth and Sport Organisations Providing Wellbeing
Services 2007 - 2013

23. PROJECT DIMPLES
The project objectives have taken shape
in four service models
- Emerging from the methods of art and culture
- To be applied by the arts and culture sector
- To complement the service supply of public authorities
(municipalities)

24. PROJECT DIMPLES
1. The Wellbeing Chain Reaction
2. The Adventure Suitcase
3. Artist – Occupational Therapist Creative Partnerships
4. Cultural Services Next-Door

25. The Wellbeing Chain Reaction
From the perspective of narrative research

26. • Long-term companionships between professional artists and public care
institutions for the elderly
• To enhance wellbeing with methods based on arts and culture
• Professional artists of third sector art organisations
 The project has enabled development in the field of applied arts
 Equal partnerships between social and health care professionals and
professional artists

27. What is art?
What is culture?
Interiööri/Hailuoto/HM
 Defining the concepts
of art and culture
C. Monet Waterlilies

28. How is the human being and is there art?
Human as a whole and realising her/himself in action

29. The Doors Are Open
for Arts

30. ”Retirement home is old people’s
home; art must come to them.
We have paused by the art work
together with the elderly and the
personnel to wonder and feel the art
– enjoying the experience generated
by arts”.
Director of an old people’s home
 The start for a partnership

31. Change and Opportunity
• In the course of the project care institutions have changed
… into an agora of personal and collective narratives of daily life
… processed and communicated through the methods of arts

32. From the Work-of-art Dominant Approach
to a Dialogic Process
”In a process, there is always a new thing, which cannot be foreseen
– a leap into the unfamiliar. One always finds something new about
people and about art making.”
An artist involved in the project DIMPLES
 Art takes place in a dialogic process between the elderly person
and the artist (Dewey 1934/1980)

33. Dialogic encountering in art is a space,
which releases meaningful ideas and emotions emerging from one’s
experiences – and folds them into interaction with visual, kinesthetic and
musical associations

34. An Invitation to Creative Interaction
Meaningful interaction takes time; it cannot be rushed.
Sensitivity and courage to approach an old person
– listening and observing without the medical status

35. Every encountering is a unique experience of the perceiving subject.
The right way to feel, interpret or react cannot be determined from the
outside.

36. Art
directs our attention to such Movement and energy in dance
contents and qualities that bring out Rhythm and harmony in music
the faces of our reality in an intensive Settings and action in theatre
way and lifted from their original
Form, colour, and texture in visual art
context:
 These qualities bring forward
relationships - consonance and
dissonance - conflicts and their
solutions

37. Life Narrated to Art
With the means of art one’s lifetime
experiences intertwine into a meaningful
life story – a narrative
The means:
• Photography
• Film art
• Fine art
• Literal art
• Performing arts
• Dance
 To be heard with the means of art
 Hidden stories to light

38. ”Hands feel like my own. I can clap with them.
In the old days I used to milk cows and bake
buns.
Hands were needed there.To know how to do
it.
Skillful hands.
Have knitted a ruffle with a thread.
Don’t think anything is going to come out of it.
Skillful hands.
It is lovely to touch the boy.
To pat the tummy.
Soft and good, a child’s tummy.
Nice needles in my hand.
The steam of a sauna feels better.
Balmy and warm.
Now I would like to touch a dog. Very fluffy”.
Life story in the form of an Ear Poem

39. “An old person is a conscious Being
until the end.
Bring every human’s extraordinariness
to light.”
A visual artist involved in the project
DIMPLES
 Hidden resources to be
discovered

40. ”I really love classical music –
and how did the conductor move?”
”I can’t dance!
If I had died yesterday,
I would not have learned that
something like this exists.”

41. The Challenge of
Finding a Shared
Language
For art and health and social care to
meet each other, a shared language is
needed between the professional
artists and the care personnel
 A three-step cooperation and
training process as the frame of
reference for experiential art
learning

42. Achievements of the Wellbeing Chain Reaction

43. From the Perspective of the Elderly
• Changes in alertness
• Recovery of speech
• Strengthening of involvement, interaction and communality
• Reinforcement of the sense of being important
• Decrease in the need for care
• Art structuring the profound experiences of life
– strengthening one’s identity and integrity

44. From the Perspective of the Artist
• Professional growth
• Change and extension of the concept of art
• Development of the sociocultural work
• Strengthening of capacity in art pedagogy
- Art pedagogy has been taken to areas where it has not been before
- Breaking down barriers

45. From the Perspective of the Nursing Staff
- Increase in wellbeing in the workplace subsequent to the rising
alertness of the elderly
- Broadening of understanding of the concepts of art and culture
- Understanding of the importance of partnerships
- Strengthening of positive attitudes toward arts and culture as part
of the care of old people with dementia
- Positive feedback from families

46. Art as a Dialogic Process – Psychological
Language
 Art has reached to the mental and emotional layers of a
human being, long forgotten, and brought to light something
meaningful to oneself
 Hidden narratives have been uncovered. Examining the
past has had a positive psychological, emotional and
cognitive effect on one’s sense of integrity.
 There is a possibility for identity building across the entire
life time
 There is a possibility for continuous learning

47. Thank you
Helena Malmivirta Nelli Koivisto
City of Salo Aalto University
helena.malmivirta@salo.fi nelli.koivisto@aalto.fi
+358 44 77 84 903 +358 50 315 2163
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48. Images
Meltio, Niklas 2012. Images of pilot project activities in a national ESF Programme ”The Third Sector Art & Culture,
Youth and Sport Organisations Providing Wellbeing Services 2007 – 2013”. (Slides 5, 10, 14, 36 and 40)
Meltio, Niklas 2010. Images from publication Kolmannella lähteellä. Koivisto, Lehikoinen, Pasanen-Willberg,
Ruusuvirta, Saukkonen, Tolvanen, Veikkolainen (Ed.s.). ESF Coordination project the THIRD SOURCE 2008-2010. Kokos
Services, The Theatre Academy Helsinki (Slide 19)
Images by project DIMPLES 2009-2012. (Slides 28-29, 33-35, 37-39, 41-42)
Distributed under Creative Commons Attribution license: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Image ”75th Anniversary Volunteers” by vastateparkstaff (Slide 7)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vastateparksstaff/5330601445/sizes/z/in/photostream/
Image ”DSCN0426” by Tor Lindstrand (Slide 7)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/international-festival/213441696/sizes/m/in/photostream/
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