Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP) at Home: Digital art-based mental health provision in response to COVID-19

Abstract

This article will provide an example of how the ‘Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP): Online psychosocial support through the arts in Rwanda’ project used digital artbased workshops to facilitate social and community cohesion and mental health provision. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased need for psychosocial support due to the economic and social pressures of lockdown and yet many individuals had less access to mental health provision. While many mental health services around the world went online, there was still a gap between the Global South and Global North in terms of digital literacy, access to smart phones and computers, and the variation between psychosocial support through individual vs. collective healing alongside Indigenous and traditional vs. western psychosocial approaches. Implications for the use of art-based digital methods as a tool for mental health provision during and after the wake of the pandemic are explored.

‘The Big Picture’: Developing community-led approaches to substance use disorder through participatory video

“…It can serve as a powerful force for people to see themselves in relation to the community', in order 'to empower people to shape their own destiny' (White 2003: 64, our emphasis). As such, PV can be seen as one of numerous art-based methods that have been adopted as an initially selfreflexive knowledge creation, and subsequent knowledge translation strategy, now frequently used within the sphere of development and public health, and upon which this work builds (Hall et al 2019;Breed 2022). (Crocker 2003), but one built upon a more sustainable model than its precursor.…”

Art Projects as Humanitarian Strategies for Psychosocial Support: International Experience of Development and Implementation

“…In this regard, the research of many foreign scholars, which presents the experience of using innovative art-based methods to build peace and dialogue in post-conflict societies, as well as to provide psychosocial support to children and youth as the most vulnerable segments of society through the implementation of art projects around the world, becomes especially important. Among such works, the studies by Ananda Breed [7,8,9,10,15], Chaste Uwihoreye [10,15], Eric Ndushabandi [10], Kirrily Pells [8,16], Matthew Elliott [8], and others are particularly noteworthy.…”