Welcome to Dr Guislain Museum!
Conference aim
The second Culture & Mental Health international conference will take place in Ghent, Belgium on 28 and 29 November 2024. This conference seeks to promote learning, discussion and debate around cultural interventions aimed at improving the wellbeing of people recovering from mental health difficulties or people in vulnerable situations. The focus of this edition is on supporting the mental wellbeing of forcibly displaced people through art and culture.
In a report in 2022 the EU and WHO call for support for the mental wellbeing of forcibly displaced people through art and culture : “People displaced because of natural disasters, persecution, conflict, generalised violence or human rights violations invariably experience significant loss, physical hardships and other stressors that can lead to psychological distress. A large body of evidence shows how forcibly displaced people contribute positively to society. This potential can be further enhanced by ensuring that they are in good physical and mental health. Therefore, according to the report, it is important to support the arts, as investing in the field is an investment in the mental, physical and social health of forcibly displaced people.”
This conference wants to bring together individuals from the public, academic, third sector and voluntary sectors, to share experiences, practices and knowledge about the importance and impact of the arts, reading, heritage and creativity on improving mental health, wellbeing and resilience of refugees.
Dr Guislain Museum, Ghent, Belgium
A symbolic venue
The Dr Guislain Museum is an obvious choice as a venue for this conference. Housed in the oldest mental asylum in Belgium, which dates back to 1857, surrounded by a mental health hospital. This museum aims to break down the many prejudices that still define what is mental illness and what is ‘normal’.
Conference programme
Our conference programme is the result of a call for papers and workshops that was reviewed by a programme committee. We have designed a divers and rich programme that covers a broad spectrum ranging from research projects to case studies. On top of this we’ve scheduled interesting keynote speakers for the plenary sessions.
Discover the Conference programme: click here for the programme
Fees
GENERAL STUDENT
Conference Day 1 100 EURO 75 EURO
Conference Day 2 100 EURO 75 EURO
Full ticket (2 days) 200 EURO 150 EURO
Conference Dinner 50 EURO 50 EURO
Call for inspiring cases from the Global South
We are calling for inspiring cases of how arts and culture support the mental, physical and social health of forcibly displaced people. The projects have to be situated in the Global South, this comprises Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia (excluding Israel, Japan and South Korea) and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand).
Conference chair
Bart De Nil is a PhD researcher between UCL Arts & Sciences and Information Studies, investigating public libraries as social infrastructure for creative health. For the past decade he has been leading developments in culturally mediated wellbeing in Flanders, Belgium and internationally.
Keynotes
Sulaiman Addonia ©Lyse Ishimwe
Sulaiman Addonia, Thursday 28 November
Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian author based in Belgium. His novels The Consequences of Love (2008) and Silence is My Mother Tongue (2019) have been translated into numerous languages; the latter was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards, the Firecracker (CLMP) Awards, and the African Literary Award from the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Fransisco. His third novel, The Seers, will be published in the UK in June 2024 and in Belgium & the Netherlands in September 2024. He currently lives in Brussels, where he has launched a Creative Writing Academy for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile). In 2021, he was awarded Belgium's Golden Afro-Art Prize for Literature, and in 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Marit Törnqvist ©Rogier Veldman
Marit Törnqvist, Thursday 28 November
Marit Törnqvist (1964) is a Swedish-Dutch writer/illustrator of children's books with an award-winning oeuvre and a large audience far beyond the Netherlands and Belgium. In addition to her work, she has initiated numerous book projects for refugee children around the world. Next to illustrating, writing and book promotion, Törnqvist regularly stands on the barricades to give a voice to people on the run. For example, in 2021 she spent three days with an art installation 'The big loss' in front of the parliament building in Stockholm to confront politicians with the failed asylum policy in Sweden.
Nils Fietje ©Sasha Chupryna
Nils Fietje, Friday 29 November
Nils Fietje is a Technical Officer within the Behavioural and Cultural Insights (BCI) Unit at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, where he is leading work on arts and health, having coordinated the first-ever WHO report on the evidence base for arts and health interventions. He is also a co-founder and co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, with a focus on policy development and research implementation.
Sarah Linn
Sarah Linn, Friday 29 November
Dr Sarah Linn is a researcher based at the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She has extensive expertise working with refugee and marginalised communities in the UK, Lebanon and Jordan using creative, collaborative and community-engaged methodologies. She has recently completed work as the Research Associate on Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging, a UKRI funded project which partnered with migrant background young people, Manchester Museum and Sheba Arts to explore the relationships between the forced migration of people and objects (2021-23). She is currently the PI on a British Academy ODA project Surfacing Zarqa which explores the intersection of marginalised youth, heritage and space in Jordan.
Manon Parry
Manon Parry, Friday 29 November
Manon S. Parry, PhD, is an historian of medicine and nursing and exhibition curator, specializing in the uses of the humanities for health and wellbeing. She is Professor of Medical and Nursing History at VU Amsterdam, and Associate Professor in American Studies and Public History at the University of Amsterdam. She has served in formal and informal advisory roles for exhibition projects on health and medicine at the Mütter Museum, Philadelphia; the National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; MUCEM, the Museum of European Civilisations, Marseille, and Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the national museum for the history of science, technology and medicine in the Netherlands. Her current research project is “Human Curiosities: Expanding the Social Relevance of Medical Museums,” funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and Special Collections/University of Amsterdam.
Organised by Dr. Guislain Museum, Iedereen Leest, Red Star Line Museum and Solentra. In co-operation with Universiteit Gent Social Work and Social Pedagogy and University College London Arts & Sciences.
Supported by The Baring Foundation.
