Small notes from a field in England

Randomised Thoughts, Controlled Ramblings and a few Trialised Thoughts 

On 22nd May between 4:00pm - 6:30pm the North West Arts and Health Network will be hosting a special event with Mike White from the Centre for Medical Humanities. Author of Arts Development in Community Health: A Social Tonic which is just about the only arts/health book I recommend, (alongside The Spirit Level) and some blistering blog postings including the recent Directions and Misdirections in Arts in Health. Mike will be giving a presentation on all things arts/health and having a conversation with all of us attending. This is a rare opportunity to meet and discuss arts, health and community development with arguably the leading light in the field. Register for the free event at artsforhealth@aol.com and confirmation and venue details will be emailed to you on Tuesday 20th May.

Thank you for the lovely email after last weeks blog. It makes it all worthwhile. I’m getting to grips with the annual exhibition that Arts for Health co-curates with colleagues at the Holden Gallery. It’s true to say Urban Psychosis is getting under my skin. You’ll know that Will Self will be speaking here in July and this week, I went out to Piccadilly Records and bought Damon Albarn’s new album, Everyday Robots - and you could knock me down with a feather! - the whole thing is pure Urban Psychosis...or at least, Damon’s own psycho-geography.If you have access to DA please ask if he’d be interested in giving us an acoustic set in late July? We will be showing, amongst others, the work of Eija Liisa Ahtila, Matthew Buckingham, Sophie Calle, Luke Fowler and Gillian Wearing and are planning some very special events! Keep your eyes on this blog for more details.

So this week, I’ve been digesting further inequalities (sorry if it bores some of you) and Arts Professional highlight that poor areas are suffering the highest local authority arts cuts. Here’s some info from their website.

The most deprived of England’s local authority areas have faced an average funding cut of 18%, which has translated to a cut to arts, libraries and heritage of 22%, according to Shadow Minister for Culture Helen Goodman MP. The second poorest quartile of councils, which have faced an average resource loss of 10%, have so far implemented a 19% cut for culture. In an attempt to quantify the impact of local authority cuts on the arts, Goodman submitted Freedom of Information requests to every local authority in England. She also found that 50% of Councils in the least deprived areas had seen an overall spending cut of 6%, including a 7% loss to culture. Speaking at the Prospect Seminar ‘Heritage in a Cold Climate’, she said: “The Department for Culture, Media and Sport have totally failed to persuade Eric Pickles of the case for culture and the arts. So, funding is dwindling across the country, as local authorities seek to protect statutory services. Just as the overall local authority cuts have hit the most deprived areas hardest, cuts to culture and arts are afflicting those who can least afford it.”

Now I pack for a week in Italy where I’ll be facilitating some RECOVERIST MANIFESTO events. What, you didn’t know about Recoverism? It’s a movement, just like Impressionism (but less chocolate-box insipid), or Futurism (but with less of the UKIP flavour), or Craftivism (but...wait on a minute...its very like Craftivism). OK, we’re upping the ante and building on the US Recovery Bill of Rights, which states:  “Our nation’s response to the crisis of addiction should be based on the engagement and involvement of the recovery community – people in recovery, their families, friends and allies – and on sound public health science. Policies and programs must close the gap between science and policy. By speaking out and putting a human face on recovery, people in or seeking recovery and their families play a critical role in breaking down barriers. These personal “faces and voices of recovery” serve powerfully to educate the public about addiction and recovery and about discrimination against those seeking sustained recovery.” Recoverism, as opposed to a bill of rights, is poetically putting people at the heart of their own stories. We’ll share on July 17th, but here's a taste - and don't worry if it doesn't make sense yet - it will all come together.

    I don’t know and it’s ok I don’t know...

Hey – who was it that said, ‘boys don’t cry’ – because they’re wrong. Boys do cry, girls cry – women and men cry too! 

    
Not sure who you are? 

      
Well, don’t you cry? We all do. FACT.

We are more than inconvenient statistics - pathological stereotypes - pedalled by the media. We are people in recovery. 

    We are lovers - children, parents, sisters, brothers - we are friends. 
         Imperfect everyday humans with lives beyond quick diagnoses and simple labels.

    ...it’s not profound, I just feel it, that’s all

USING MOBILE METHODS TO RESEARCH THE LIVES OF YOUNG MEN AT THE MEN’S ROOM MANCHESTER

Wednesday 21th May 2014 15:00 – 17:30

Last Friday, I had the great pleasure to attend the very stimulating AHRC funded, Public Arts Now: Thinking Beyond Measurement workshop, facilitated by UCLAN’s Prof Lynn Froggett and Dr Ali Roy with able support by SITUATIONS Michael Prior. They offered a deeper and more nuanced understanding of cultural value in the context of art in the public realm. Lovely to meet new and exciting people too. Ali Roy will be sharing more of his work that’s been developed with the Men’s Room. 

Walking as a research method has been adopted in anthropology and ethnography, cultural geography and qualitative social science as an innovative way to produce knowledge. This body of work is based on the oft-cited notion of the co-ingredience of people and place, the idea that identities, experiences and behaviours are embedded in the places a person inhabits. This seminar presents findings from a research project conducted with the Men’s Room, Manchester, an arts and social care agency which works creatively with young men involved with sex work or with experience of sexual exploitation and those with experience of homelessness and/or the criminal justice system. In the project seven ‘walking tours’ were conducted with the young men as part of the research. Young men were invited to lead a researcher and a Men’s Room staff member on a walking tour of city centre sites they associated with their survival. On arrival at each stop, we asked them to take a photograph and, if they were happy to, tell a story about the site. The seminar concludes by arguing that there is a need to better understand the trajectories of movement experienced by young men facing severe and multiple disadvantage in order to provide appropriate support. More details and registration by clicking on the walkers below.

From our own (Arts and Health) correspondent….

Singer, Victoria Hume worked for many years on the London Arts and Health Forum and at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust. She moved to South Africa recently and is posting some excellent blogs, of which the extract below is taken. Click on the picture below to link to her blog.

"...the notion of social responsibility in the arts is – I would contest – more embedded here (in South Africa) than in the UK. {…} South Africa lacks the embarrassment we have had to contend with for years in the UK around engaged practice. This is at last changing in the UK, thanks in part to artists like Grayson Perry who engage with the politics both of their practice and of the society around them." 

Grants to Help New, Innovative Visual Arts Projects 

The Elephant Trust has announced that the next deadline for applications is the 7th July 2014. The Trust offers grants to artists and for new, innovative visual arts projects based in the UK. The Trust's aim is to make it possible for artists and those presenting their work to undertake and complete projects when confronted by lack of funds. The Trust supports projects that develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the fine arts. Priority is now being given to artists and small organisations and galleries who should submit well argued, imaginative proposals for making or producing new work or exhibitions. Arts Festivals are not supported. The Trust normally awards grants of up to £2,000, but larger grants may be considered. Read more at http://elephanttrust.org.uk/docs/intro.html

Carnegie Challenge 

The Carnegie UK Trust has announced that it is offering up to ten not-for-profit organisations from the UK and Ireland the opportunity to win grants worth £3,000 to hold inspiring debates on how to improve people’s wellbeing. The Carnegie UK Trust has been arguing that focusing on delivering economic growth as the sole indicator of social prosperity is flawed. Instead, the Trust believes the time is right for the UK and Ireland to shift its emphasis from economic production to improving people’s lives more broadly.  The Carnegie Challenge aims to support events around the UK and Ireland that will deepen understanding of what influences individual and societal wellbeing; explore how best to measure wellbeing and how this can be used to shape policy and practice; or examine what practical steps can be taken by third sector organisations and governments to improve wellbeing.There will be three funding rounds in 2014 and the next closing date for applications is the 14th July 2014. Read more at:http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/changing-minds/carnegie-challenge

Advanced notice of the 6th Annual International Arts, Health & Wellbeing Conference in Melbourne between 11 - 13 November this year. 

Click on the image above for details.

Call for Entries!

Northern Artist Film Programme

Deadline 6 June

We are looking for artists and filmmakers in the North of England who are pushing the boundaries in artist film. We want to showcase a range of new, inspirational and challenging film art from emerging northern talent. We want excellent work that captures the imagination of the public, many of whom would be new to artist film. For more information, click on the still from the sublime (but oh so distrurbing), A Field in England by Ben Wheatley.

Untold Stories in Health and Illness

Saturday 17th May Manchester

Click on the dear little tiger for more information

...inequalities, abuse, virtual love affairs and more

...a week of heightened moments of the here and now* with added miserablist awareness of inequalities, all punctuated by a 21st Century love affair! Good grief...let’s start with the miserable eh.

As the BBC’s Panorama yet again exposed neglect and abuse in care services for elderly people and we all scrabble around looking for someone to blame, sack or make a scape-goat of, I can’t help wondering why we don’t just stop and ask why people abuse their power like this? Perhaps the answer is borne of the simple fact, that the people who are doling out the abuse, seem to have no power, or rather the only power they do have, is direct power over those worse off than themselves - the elderly, infirm and least able. Time and again it appears that the people with the least/fewest resources (emotional, educational and economic) take on the work that no one else wants to do, the poorly paid, the under stimulated and the ‘services’ we routinely hide-away. Spoon-feeding, shaving and mopping up all manner of bodily fluids. 

For those of us who traipse into care homes with our cultural interventions and who evangelise about the arts from our comfortable transient roles ‘transforming’ peoples lives as we go, it’s easy to forget the over-worked care assistant, who dosen’t want to take part in our cultural activity. The grim reality of care is that no one cares about the carers (or perhaps we do when it’s our own relative, but not when its one of a million anonymous others).

I’ve had a couple of stints as a nursing assistant in an old fashioned hospital for people with learning difficulties and in a smaller care home where, I toileted and brushed the teeth of adults. In the hospital, it was like a production line of ‘care’ and in the smaller home, at least the ratio of care was appropriate. But in both cases, I witnessed what I would describe as institutionalised behaviour and appalling attitudes to fellow humans, (I knew people who cared deeply too).

But bloody hell, the job is so demanding - exhausting - and emotionally draining and in both cases for me, I saw the job as a necessity, in between jobs - it certainly wasn’t my vocation. Yet again this reminds me of our unequal society and how, from positions of comfort and relative power, we can point at the ‘underclasses’ who we throw a few pennies to and ask to look after our feeble and aged relatives and then kick up a stink when it all goes wrong.

Surely we should understand inequalities by now. We’ve had Marmot illustrating them these last few years and we had Sir Douglas Black telling us a similar story in the early 1980’s. Come to think of it those early public health pioneers did something similar over 100 years ago and Dickens did a reasonable job of painting a picture of unequal societies, so by now, we should have a pretty good idea how economic, domestic and educational circumstances perpetuate inequalities.

As Kate Picket and Danny Dorling so eloquently suggest in Against the organisation of misery? The Marmot Review of health inequalities, we know all this, but we don’t have the political will to act.

“No reviews or policies ‘boldly go’ where all public health researchers know they need to go. And yet our evidence base for the social determinants of health proceeds apace; we learn more and more about the futility of trying to change individual behaviour, and more and more about the importance of influences in the womb and early years of childhood. Indeed, the Marmot Review could have gone much further, if it had only placed greater reliance on Sir Michael Marmot’s own research and that of his colleagues studying life-course effects on health in the British birth cohorts. In contrast to 1980 when the Black Report was published, we now, thanks especially to his work, know much more about the importance of psychosocial influences on population health. We also know much more about the biology of chronic stress (Sapolsky, 2005), about how rank and status harm health (Marmot, 2004). We know that children get the best start in life by being brought up in more equitable societies, rather than in rich ones (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2007). Why did the Marmot Review not make hard-hitting recommendations to reduce the harm created by great differences in rank and status? 

Whilst our ‘for profit’ care homes continue to be driven by the market value of each of its fragile ‘commodoties’, it will take a significant political shift to start valuing not only the oldest and most vulnerable people, but those who care for them too. With the average wage for care assistants being just over £7 per hour and only basic training on offer, care homes are competing with supermarkets for staff.

We are unequal at both ends of our life course - topped and tailed - so to speak. Only this week the report Why Children Die using data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation reveals that children under five in the UK are more likely to die than in any other western European country except Malta. The report in The Lancet exposes one specific factor: deaths rise with socio-economic deprivation. We should be appalled.

Again, Picket and Dorling stress that much of the focus on inequalities is wrapped up in the language of “...economics, not social epidemiology or progressive public health. It is a language that has seeped into our everyday vocabulary and thinking…”

Of course I’m a great advocate for making all care-environments more creative, stimulating and culturally vibrant spaces - but let’s get real - we are skimming the surface of the water, and as Picket and Dorling conclude: 

“What is missing is the political courage to deal with the root causes of those social determinants. Why people smoke, rather than trying to get them to stop, why people eat too much, commit violence, trust each other less, invest more money in their children’s education, rather than trying to understand the social inequalities that stand in their way.”

Hilary Moss and Desmond O’Neill contribute an excellent paper to The Lancet called, Aesthetic deprivation in clinical settings. Here’s a paragraph to whet your appetite, and click on the bottle of Buxton Water above for the full article.

“...many clinicians, including those favourably disposed to a greater presence of arts in health care, remain uncomfortable with the often fulsome language and somewhat uncritical stance of evangelists of the arts and health movement. Phrases such as the “healing arts” seem to overstate potential benefits and contain uneasy echoes of obscurantism and mysticism. Indeed, many of us may associate the golden age of art in hospitals with the worst forms of speculative and unscientific treatment—the four humours, purging, and blood-letting.”

HA...and so to a 21st Century love affair. French newspaper Le Monde has startled its readers by serialising a graphic novel about an online love affair on its website. The novel illustrates virtual love in an Internet age where two people become friends through the internet communications site, Skype. They start to have remote sex without meeting. La Technique du perinea is by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot and coloured by Isabelle Merlet. Click on the image above to go to the story. Fancy yourself as a graphic short story writer? Read on...

Graphic Short Story Prize

Want to apply for the Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize 2014? Click on the audience below for more details...

New Science & Society Community Challenge Grant Scheme 

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has announced a new £500,000 grants scheme to support to create and run pilot projects that take science to diverse audiences. There will be 3 levels of project funding: up to £10,000, up to £20,000 and up to £40,000, depending on the size and difficulty of the project. The scheme is open to a wide range of people, including:

• Scientists and researchers
• Science centre or museum staff
• Educators, schools, colleges and universities
• Film makers
• Theatre producers
• Games developers

It is expecting to fund between 20 and 25 projects in the 2014/15 financial year. The deadline for applications is 16th May 2014. Read more at https://www.gov.uk/science-and-society-community-challenge-grant-scheme

The Peter Cruddas Foundation 

The Peter Cruddas Foundation is a grant making Foundation that aims to support charitable works that benefit disadvantaged and disengaged young people in the UK by ensuring that their funding reaches those most in need. Priorities for funding are:

Pathways/support for young disadvantaged or disengaged people in the age range 14 to 30 into education, training or employment

Work experience/skills projects for young people aged 16 to 30

Youth work in London particularly evening work for disadvantaged young people aged 16 to 30.

To be eligible for funding an organisation must be a registered charity or an organisation / individual supported by a UK charity. There are no minimum or maximum grants and projects can be funded for more than one year. The closing date for application is the 1st September 2014.  Read more at:http://thepetercruddasfoundation.org/how_to_apply.htm

Fancy working in Stockholm as an artist in residence? Click on the ice-cream eating nuns to find out more.

*Working from home, and seeing the sun come out, I had the opportunity to have my lunch in a graveyard - so took it (broad beans in the pod, lump of cheese and bread, an apple and a drink). A small church by the estuary as the tide was pouring in. The sun, shining through broken clouds after a week of rain. The sky full of flying things - mayfly, newly liberated from their nymph stage for a couple of days at the most, in search of insect intimacy - and midges by the tens of thousands. Sitting on a bench, dedicated to two long-dead lovers. In the newly mown grass, lay a freshly dead thrush, quite relaxed and oblivious to the fussing of the flies. Behind me, on a rise, a tiny old church, its ornately carved Norman doorway honey coloured in the sunlight. Daffodils who had lost their heads, but roses who were expectant with something altogether pinker and more secret. Two beautiful butterflies* dancing on unseen thermals laced with perfume-like pheromones. A thousand daisies crowded-out by a million bluebells and wild garlic that filled the air with something heady. The buzzing of the flies, the songs of unknown birds and an awareness of myself in the lattice-work of fields, imbued a deep sense of the here and now. Something quite delicious took over me. An intoxicating gravity. A gentle breeze as we turn through space, my feet heavy on the earth. A certain death below, before and after me. All these transient things. Having never meditated, I guessed that this was something like that, only instead of emptying my mind, it was focused down to this overwhelming nowness and some relaxed acceptance of things beyond myself. It’ll be alright, you are ok, everything will be fine.

*Female butterflies release perfume-like pheromones into the air. The male butterflies of many species can detect the pheromones from as far away as 2 kilometres. Some species of moths are sensitive to the presence of the females' pheromones up to five kilometres away.

MANIFESTAS UŽ MENĄ IR PSICHIKOS SVEIKATĄ

On Tuesday 22nd April people from across Lithuania came together with like-minded colleagues from Finland and the UK to explore cross-cultural partnerships in arts and mental health. Organized by Socialiniai Meno Projektai and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania with the support of others including the British Council and the Tiltas Trust, the one day conference sought to explore the Lithuanian National Progress Programme 2014-2020 where both culture and health are seen as horizontal priorities in state policy. With plans that culture and health will be integrated into all the fields of public and political interest, the conference set its aims high, exploring close collaboration between cross-governmental institutions and NGOs.

Alongside Šaronas Birutis, the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania; Lolita Jablonskienė, Director of National Gallery of Art, Arturas Vasiliauskas, Director of The British Council in Lithuania and Bo Harald Tillberg, the Director of The Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Lithuania, I had the honour of setting the scene for the event, which I hoped would open up meaningful dialogue and exchange that went beyond rhetoric - and critically - gives voice to people affected by mental health issues, to affect long-term public change.

The day was planned and chaired beautifully by Ieva Petkute who set the scene and introduced Roma Survilienė who gave a historical overview of the work of Socialiniai Meno Projektai and its direction in Lithuania sharing its ongoing practice and research. The first UK speaker was Stuart Webster from BlueSCI in Manchester who painted a vivid picture of the stealthy, strategic direction of his organisation which crucially is a partnership between artists and health professionals, and which over the last few years has become central to provision of cultural and wellbeing services in an geographical area of great inequality.

Šaronas Birutis, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania

Ismo Suksi is the Senior Officer at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health In Finland and gave an overview of the influential Finnish Strategy Culture for Health and Wellbeing 2010-2014. His presentation was an honest account of the successes and failures of the strategy and he reflected that to some extent, culture is now seen as part of promoting well-being in the work place and to a limited extent, the impact of the built environment on well-being is accepted. He reported that understanding of the role of cultural activities on inclusion and social capital and arts/cultural methods being used as preventative activity are only embraced to a limited extent. But perhaps the most significant finding he reported to the conference, was that the significance of the positive effect of art and culture on well-being is still not at all understood at policy and administration levels. This is deeply interesting and will need unpicking further. The implications in such a progressive country are important and I look forward to discussing this further with my counterparts in Finland, to whom I thank for sharing.

Following the three presentations, we had a very active debate. These discussions were populated and co-facilitated by key senior civil servants from the Ministries of Social Security and Labour, Culture and of Health of the Republic of Lithuania and provoked some familiar heated exchange about the distribution of funding, familiar to all of us in the field, but robustly discussed by representatives of government and delegates alike. I had the opportunity to share policy and strategy from a UK perspective with some focus on the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing, the development of the All Party Parliamentary Group and of course, I used the moment to find out a little more about the delegates in the room, positing the idea of developing a network and an advocacy document, not dissimilar to a manifesto!

Following a break for lunch, we experienced a touching dance performance to celebrate spring and which saw residents and social workers of the Kaunas Kartų Namai Care Center, coming together with the choreography of Asta Brilingienė and Marija Vitkūnaitė and stunning visuals by Eglė Gudonytė. A dignified and moving piece of work that received a justifiably rousing response from the delegates. 

The afternoon presentations started with Director of the State Mental Health Centre, Ona Davidoniene, who shared data on population mental health across Lithuania and its parity to other Baltic countries. The data illustrated the need for cross-sectoral partnerships, with unacceptably high levels of mental ill-health and suicide in the country. 

Currently, within primary mental health care, there are 164 thousand clients, which is 5,5 % of all the population. In 2012, the suicide rate was 54,7 men and 10,8 women per 100 thousand citizens. Domestic violence, bullying, alcohol addiction and a lack of mental health specialists were cited as key factors. Her presentation stressed the need for activity that strengthened and prevented ill-health in Lithuania - something we felt that culture, creativity and the arts might play a key role in. 

Lee Knifton is the Co-Director of the International Centre for Health Policy at the University of Strathclyde, and Director of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, which each year attracts around 100 thousand visitors and is widely regarded as an exemplar in both mental health promotion and crucially, fighting stigma. Sharing this large-scale and well-established work was counter-balanced by another UK speaker, Julie McCarthy from 42nd Street, a Manchester based mental health charity, which provides services to young people experiencing mental health problems. The organisation works with over 1000 young people per year between the ages of 13 to 25, who have mental health problems including depression, anxiety, behavioural problems and self-harm. 

The second panel debate of the day was moderated by Dr Aurelijus Veryga, deputy professor at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences and psychiatrist and our very own Dr Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt who has part of her AHRC funded cultural values project, has been interrogating data sets from Scandinavia and the UK to understand the long-term impact of cultural participation on health outcomes. The previous speakers were joined by Psychologist and Director of public non-profit institution Perspectives of Mental Health, Karilė Levickaitė to explore collaborative models, impact and evaluation. 

We discussed the reality that within the cultural sector, there is a lack of impact evaluation results, not only in Lithuania, but in most EU countries. It was agreed that it is important to share experience internationally. Aurelijus underlined the importance to collaborate with researchers and public health specialists to find ways to better understand the impact of art and culture on health. The collected experience and analysis of impact could become a guideline for the policy makers. This opinion was supported by Karilė, who observed that evaluation is of significant importance for the NGOs, which hold huge potential that could be harnessed in mental health prevention practice, but where often there are a lack of skills to participate in the process of policy making. 

Delegates raised issues of the importance of focusing on children and young people and we explored some ideas around what constituted evaluation in arts and mental health. A number of people with experience of mental health issues expressed their interest in being part of this conversation and network.

This free conference was over-subscribed and the atmosphere was one of exploring new possibilities in the promotion and protection of mental health and wider wellbeing, with delegates and contributors alike galvanised to imagine new possibilities in the arts and public mental health. Sharing copies of the celebratory art magazine NOUS from Manchester, which explores the philosophical and poetic elements of mental difference and which includes contributors from around the world, I suggested the possibility that working with Socialiniai Meno Projektai, we should harness some of the passion and political will in the room, to bring people together through an informal Lithuanian arts and mental health network - and to kick start things - begin exploring a Lithuanian MANIFESTO for Arts and Mental WEalth. So, true to our word, this is a starting point, a seed of an idea, something we can grow together, whilst our minds and hearts are bursting with ideas.

Let’s share thoughts. Let’s begin to tell our story and share our vision and let’s start NOW. Those of you involved in the conference, we ask that you respond to these simple questions.

WHO ARE YOU - AND WHY DID YOU COME TO THE CONFERENCE?

(are you a survivor, an artist, a health or social worker, a politician...we are rich and varied people, so tell us a little about yourself)

WHAT CAN YOU SHARE WITH OTHER LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE?

(no answer is wrong - it may be knowledge, it may be experience, it may be time and energy...or anything else)

HOW CAN CREATIVITY, CULTURE AND THE ARTS HELP OUR MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL BEING?

(those of us attending the conference are inspired to create positive change, but how do we tell this story, share our evidence and inspire others who may just not yet understand it)

IF YOU COULD SHOUT TO THE PEOPLE OF LITHUANIA, WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

(feel free to express anything about this see of an idea...anything)

Send your responses to Ieva Petkute ieva@menasgerovei.lt by May 9th and before the month is through, we’ll have our first ideas of how we’ll grow as a movement in Lithuania...and create our first draft of a manifesto. For details in Lithuanian go to http://www.menasgerovei.lt/kvieciame-dalyvauti-manifeste-uz-mena-ir-psichikos-sveikata/   

I want to thank extend my personal thanks to Artūras Vasiliauskas, Director of The British Council in Lithuania for his continued enthusiasm, generosity and commitment to innovation in this field. It was wonderful to meet new and inspirational people who took part in the day and a huge thank you for the warmth and friendship of my hosts. 

ačiū