Racism, Discrimination, and Microaggressions: Effects on Mental Health

We know from extensive research that racism can cause significant harmful effects to the victim’s physical and mental health. In 2006, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) established a formal position against racism and discrimination, which partly states that the APA “recognizes that racism and racial discrimination adversely affect mental health by diminishing the victim’s self-image, confidence and optimal mental functioning…. APA believes that attempts should be made to eliminate racism and racial discrimination by fostering a respectful appreciation of multiculturalism and diversity.”

However, racism—prejudice or discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on a belief that one’s own race is superior—is not a mental disorder (it is not included in APA’s diagnostic manual*).

Racism may not appear in the form of clear and obvious acts, it may be in the form of less obvious, “every day” racism.  These acts, termed “microaggressions,” by psychiatrist Chester Pierce, M.D. in 1970, are subtle, often automatic, and nonverbal exchanges with negative overtones. Originally the concept referred to put-downs of blacks by whites in the post-Civil Rights era, but it has since evolved to include people with many differences.  

These subtle and even unintentional acts, can none-the-less be harmful. The effects of this on children are especially pronounced. Victims of racism often display signs of physical and emotional stress. Some victims even start behaving in self-destructive ways that conform to the negative stereotypes they are facing.

Even perceived discrimination can affect health and mental health in several ways, according to an analysis of more than 130 medical studies.** For example, the stress of ongoing perceived discrimination can lead to an increase in unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking or drinking, and decrease in healthy behaviors, such as exercising and healthy eating. If a person has a sense of hopelessness, and low self-esteem, they may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors.  

So how can people protect themselves?  Research suggests several ways to help protect yourself, including having a supportive network of friends and family you can talk to about problems; taking action to address a situation of discrimination, rather than ignoring or avoiding it; and having strong ties to the group(s) with which you identify.

We can all be more mindful of the existence and impact of even subtle and unintentional racism and racial discrimination in the lives of patients and their families and in their everyday practice.

Read more on the Microaggressions Project blog which provides many examples of everyday microaggressions from people across the country.

By Ranna Parekh, M.D.

Director, Division of Diversity and Health Equity\

American Psychiatric Association

References:

*American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) 2013. Washington, DC:  Author.

**Pascoe EA, Richman LS. (2009). Perceived Discrimination and Health:  A Meta-Analytic Review. Pscyhol Bull; 135(4):531-554.

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The Connected Communities, Dementia & Imagination event was great - my big thanks to all of you who came and contributed and in particular - Kat, Sam, Chris, Teri and Penny. More about that soon. Read reflections on creativity based interventions by occupational therapist, Alison Stefan, here. 

Last week I shared the most excellent job opportunity at the Dukes in Lancaster. I thought that was the bees knees, but good grief! Here's one of the best jobs in the UK at the moment at the superb LEVEL. Following the death of the wonderful Peter Shelton last September, this is one of those rare opportunities to be part of something significant. 

Director at LEVEL (Derbyshire)
Salary £35-42K depending on skills and experience. For 25 years LEVEL (formerly known as First Movement) has pioneered in the power of arts and creativity to change the lives of people with learning disabilities. Based in Derbyshire, the charity’s work has a growing national and international impact. In 2008 we opened the doors of the stunning £1.8million purpose-built LEVEL Centre at Rowsley, where we attract over 5000 attendances per year from people with a learning disability.

A successful NPO bid has secured funding for the 2015-18 period and confirmed the Arts Council’s continued confidence in LEVEL’s past achievements and future aspirations. At this exciting time, we seek an inspirational Director to lead LEVEL’s development as an innovative provider of high quality arts experiences with and for the learning disabled community. Further information and application details can be found at http://levelcentre.com/about/opportunities/ 
or alternatively contact Alison Foote to find out more alison@levelcentre.com or call on 01629 734848 or 07702829985. Closing date for applications is 3pm on 13th July 2015. Interviews are on 24th July 2015.



Singing the Blues Project Officer
The Royal College of Music provides specialised musical education and professional training at the highest international level for performers and composers. The post-holder will be responsible for coordinating the running of the ‘Singing the Blues’ research project, which will investigate the impact of music on postnatal depression. Key tasks will include setting up and managing research interventions for new mothers and their babies, developing marketing strategies to recruit new mothers, supporting the team in collecting and managing research data, and liaising with key project partners.For details, click on the photo below.

There's a new Chair for the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee at Westminster, so let's keep a watchful eye on Jesse Norman, MP, who has been elected Chairman of this Committee, a post previously held by current Culture Minister John Whittingdale. He is a Trustee of the Roundhouse, a director of the Hay Festival and a Patron of the Music Pool, and has called for a redistribution of arts funding away from London and to the regions, recognising that “two-thirds of the country lives outside the readily affordable range of ‘national’ cultural organisations”. Norman said that he was “absolutely delighted” to have been elected, and was looking forward to fulfilling his new role by “holding government departments and other public bodies to account”. The election of the other members of the Committee is to follow in due course, with a seat allocation per party. Read more by clicking on the chair below!

Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship
Every year I encourage people to apply for this wonderful opportunity. Do you practice or support those working in Heritage Crafts? Would you benefit from travelling overseas to meet other people with the same specialism as you, in order to share ideas, innovation and skills, and to reinvigorate your work? Click on the Boeing 314 for more details.

Feminist Review Trust Grants (UK/International)
The Feminist Review Trust has announced that the next round of its 2015 grants programme is now open for applications. The Feminist Review Trust gives grants of up to £15,000 to projects in the UK and internationally that support women. The Trust will prioritise applications for:

• Hard to fund projects that have no other obvious sources of funding
• Pump priming activities to help start a project in the hope that it will then be able attract sufficient funding to continue
• Interventionist projects that support feminist values
• Training and development projects
• One off events
• Dissemination of relevant material
• Core funding for groups that struggle to raise it elsewhere.

Other projects outside of these above categories may be funded but potential applicants should contact the Trust to discuss eligibility before submitting an application. The deadline for applications is 30th September 2015. Read more by clicking on the classic Spare Rib.

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Corporate wellness is making me sick...

I took part in an excellent and interesting event at the beautiful V&A on Friday. The Sackler Conference 2015: Art, Design and New Technology for Health, was great and it was good to hear people from different sectors getting together, instead of the usual suspects. Chairing a session on interactive and digital art in healthcare environments, was - to a degree - outside my comfort zone. But it was great to share the stage with people from design, curation and the health sector and in fact, it got me thinking again (sorry to drone on) about our work, language and the cult of individual 'wellness'. 

Looking at the wretched Hedonometer Project website today, I notice from their 'research' that people were pretty happy around christmas and valentines day, but (strange, this one) were less happy after the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo in Paris and even more unhappy after the arrest of Justin Bieber! Oh yes, and this reliable data was gathered from twitter. That’s accurate then.

So in a fit of pique and primed to write just a few slanderous lines on our burgeoning obsession with quantifying the self through every App (and orifice) conceivable, it is with some relief that I read in one of today's papers, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, Mark Honigsbaum has similar concerns, describing far more eloquently than I could, that: ‘In this brave new world of human-technological assemblages, the “digitally engaged patient”, or epatient, becomes the new ideal and a marketer’s wet dream.”

Whilst Honigsbaum focuses on the data, eluding to its storage and usage in a post-Snowden world, for my part I still see a narcissistic consumerism that’s well marketed and which taps into the age-old delusion of defeating death.

Of course, technological advances in health improvement are to be encouraged, it’s just, as Honigsbaum comments, this new technology, ‘...is the thin end of a very long wedge, one that may see us sprinting towards a post-human future in which some people enjoy markedly better health styles and promotion prospects than others.’

A DATE FOR YOUR DIARY
The 7th of October 2015 
The Republic of Arts & Health offers up a free international one-day event at The Manchester School of Art. 

We are Local- We are International 

  LIFE IS MESSY 
    LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 
        LET US SHARE OUR FAILURES  
            & OUR GLORIOUS SUCCESSES

(More details soon, but the date is fixed) 

…now here's a lovely job!

Inclusive Film and Theatre Officer 
Lancaster theatre and Cinema, the Dukes, works with many marginalised and excluded communities. They are now expanding their film and arts programme for people living with dementia – A Life More Ordinary – both in Lancaster and to other partner venues. They wish to appoint an Inclusive Film and Theatre Officer on a salary scale: £20,000-£23,000 depending on experience.The closing date for completed applications: 5pm Tues 7th July.

http://dukes-lancaster.org/about-us/work-with-us/ 

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For the love of - well - for the love of love, actually...

The sun has scorched the earth this week - well, on my own patch of land at least. I’m reminded of some Flaming Lips lyrics: ‘...the sun doesn’t go down, it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.’ A lovely song and apologies for the always-dubious Lips video below. Lovely messages came in about Mike White this week and it was heartening to hear from so many people who had been in some small way, affected by him and his vision of equal, healthy and flourishing communities. A mutual friend of ours had a baby this week and there’s something so bloody good and right and natural about this, it just reminds me - everything continues.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I do like the word amateur. It’s so easy to fall into jargon around ‘professionalism’ when we talk about the arts. Refreshing then, to read about the actor Jim Broadbent and his carvings of wooden people, on which he comments: “This is a hobby, I’m sure it’s therapeutic. It stimulates me, gets me up in the morning so it’s a passion as well,” he said. “I’m keen to get back to it, quite keen to see which way he/she is going to develop. I love getting better at it.”

“They are people, and people depend on love and give love and need love and maybe these people love each other.” His People are on display at the Southbank Centre’s, Festival of Love.

I was asked by Arts + Health over in Ireland to write a short perspective on the creation of the Manifesto for Arts & Health and if you have the inclination to read my thoughts on this process, click on the photograph below. It’s called A Love-Filled Slap, and I’ve been told if you google it, you’re more likely to end up in the the world of S&M - you have been warned!

There are just 10 free tickets left for the Dementia & Imagination event on the 25th June. Click on Bette or Joan to find out more.

I'll be at the Art, Design and New Technology for Health: Sackler Conference at the V&A this Friday 19 June. If you are coming to the event, do say hello. The conference will explore the role of interactive and digital art in healthcare environments. It will reflect on the principles of design in health and consider the potential of digital innovations to empower individuals and revolutionise healthcare experiences. Programme available by clicking HERE. 

The always compelling NOUS magazine is out. The PANIC edition is to be found in all good Manchester outlets, including my all-time favourite The Koffee Pot. Well done Lisa Lorenz and all the contributors! Great to see the cover by Lithuanian artist, Eglė Gudonytė and new poetic work by Viltautė Krupickaitė.

Whilst our dear old Chancellor has announced his £4.5billion cost-cutting measures within a month of the general election, we should keep a wary eye on the £30m cut to the DCMS’s annual budget of £1.2bn. At the moment, the Arts Council has been asked to cut just 0.3% from its budget as its new Chief Executive calls on the government to back culture while promising a funding shift outside of London. Let’s keep our eyes on all this eh? ACE have announced a number of new funding streams, including investing £35.2 million in helping organisations produce high quality and spectacular events and works of art, particularly outside London. The fund will develop talent and leadership in organisations as well as supporting individual creative projects. There’s now an opportunity for existing Creative people and places consortia to apply for funds to help more people experience and be inspired by the arts. £5 million is available in this round, with a further £5 million in April 2017. Read more by clicking on the £4million Notting Hill home of the chancellor, that according to The Mirror is rented out for around £2,640 per week, as he sleeps in his rent free Downing Street abode. 

An International Conference on Music in Healthcare Settings, hosted by OPUS Music CIC in partnership with air Arts for Health and Royal Derby Hospital and supported using public funding by Arts Council England. This will be taking placed from 9.30am to 4.30pm on Thursday 16th July in the Education Centre at the Royal Derby Hospital, Derby, UK.
Anyone with an interest in music-making within healthcare settings is invited to join us for a stimulating, discussion-filled day on this ever-growing practice. Click HERE.

A short and cracking film of No More Heroes that The Stanglers are taking oh, so seriously

IMPACT: Generate and Demonstrate
16th July 2015, 9.30-4pm
Cartwheel Arts are organising a conference exploring arts and impact. This event is part of their project Art for Wellbeing, which focuses on creative projects to support positive mental wellbeing. Health professionals and Third Sector organisations will share creative solutions to generate positive mental wellbeing. Through creative tools and methodologies, a newly commissioned exhibition and film showcase, they will explore how to capture evidence to effectively communicate impact. Manchester Metropolitan University, Birley Buildings, Hulme, M15 6GX
Please click HERE to purchase tickets. Please note that this event is not organised by Arts for Health, but by Cartwheel Arts.

Idlewild Trust 
The Idlewild Trust has announced that the next closing date for applications to its grant making programme is the 23rd September 2015. The Idlewild Trust is a grant making trust that supports registered charities concerned with the encouragement of the performing and fine arts and crafts, the advancement of education within the arts and the preservation for the benefit of the public of lands, buildings and other objects of beauty or historic interest in the United Kingdom. The Trust awards around £120,000 each year in grants and makes grants of up to £5,000. 
http://www.idlewildtrust.org.uk

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Nutrition and Mental Health: Dr. Ramsey’s 5 Rules for Eating for Happiness

Dr. Drew Ramsey

A growing body of research is confirming the relationship between a good, quality diet and better mental health outcomes. Poor diet (generally defined as greater consumption of saturated fats and refined and processed foods and lower consumption of fruits, vegetables, fish and nutrient-dense foods) has been associated with depression, anxiety and ADHD. A recent review of studies focused on children and adolescents found a consistent trend in the relationship between a healthy diet and better mental health.(1)


So how do you go about improving your diet and your mental health without overly complicated or restrictive regimes? Drew Ramsey, M.D., psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, and author, has identified a simple set of 5 rules to eat for happiness—advice he gives to patients and others who want to simplify meal choices and maximize brain health.



1. Skip the processed foods. Processed foods are filled with empty calories; whole grains, lentils, nuts, leafy greens, and seafood contain brain-healthy nutrients.



2. Don’t fear fats. “Good fats,” omega-3 fats DHA and EPA found in whole foods like fish, , dairy products and pasture-raised eggs, are great for your brain. Trans fats, however, are among the unhealthiest substances and are still found in many packaged baked goods.



3. Mind your meat. While a plant-based diet is important, the right meat is an important source of protein, zinc and vitamin B12. “Grass-fed” or “pasture-raised” beef and chicken and “farm fresh” eggs are more nutritionally beneficial.

4. Go organic. Organic choices, increasingly available at most supermarkets, avoid the potential risks of insecticides and pesticides. And summer is great time to check out your local farmers’ market.



5. Make friends with farmers. Shopping at your local farmers’ market can give you added motivation to stay away from a pre-packaged processed-food diet. Getting to know the people who grow your food also offers you the opportunity to gain a better understanding of what you’re eating.



As Dr. Ramsey notes: “The goal is not to become a food snob, but to make that vital connection between your fork and your feelings and choose foods that support your emotional well-being and enhance your sense of vitality.”




Follow Dr. Ramsey @DrewRamseyMD.





By Deborah Cohen, senior writer, American Psychiatric Association


(1) O’Neil A, Quirk S, Housden S, et al. 2014. Relationship between Diet and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review. American Journal of Public Health, 104:10, e31-41. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4167107/

From Secrets and Shame to an Authentic Self: How Caitlyn Jenner Could Reduce Stigma for Transgender People

When Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner revealed her new identity as a transgender woman this week, it sparked many news articles and conversations about what it means to be transgender.



“For many people, it is difficult to understand how you can feel like a different person in your own body,” said Marshall Forstein, M.D., chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s LGBT Caucus, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of Adult Psychiatry Residency Training at the Cambridge Health Alliance. 



As celebrities like Jenner and Laverne Cox share their personal stories, they help reduce the stigma around being transgender, Forstein said. “The more that people get to know people who are living their authentic lives, the easier it is to understand.”



“I think any time there’s a sudden revelation of secrets there are different ways people metabolize that information,” said Forstein said. “Some people will say: ‘Wow, how brave.’ Others will doubt that someone could know they are transgender from such an early age.” Although research on transgender is limited, evidence shows that changes in the brain may occur even before people are born—leading to a disconnect between their outward appearance and how they feel.



Despite the limited research on transgender individuals, Forstein said: “One of the things we know is that, by and large, people who do transition begin to feel happier about this consistency of the internal and external experience.”



While many people who are transgender experience anxiety and depression, Forstein said that this is usually a result of keeping their authentic identity hidden: “It’s the pressure of stigma and shame from being other than what society wants you to be.” As defined by the DSM-5, gender dysphoria ends once an individual has transitioned to their authentic gender. “Put yourself in a situation where you’re not allowed to be you—like when left-handed children were forced to write with their right hands—what would that do to your mental health?”



As Jenner shared with more than a million Twitter followers on Monday: “I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can’t wait for you to get to know her/me.”



By Amanda Davis, Deputy Director of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, APA

Mike White

Mike White died yesterday. 

Mike had cancer and talked very openly about his experiences and treatment over this last year, and until the last few weeks, had kept a blog which shared some of his reflections and the gritty realities of living with cancer. If you haven’t read it, it’s compelling stuff and can be found by clicking on the lantern procession below.

I first met Mike when I worked for the NHS in Public Mental Health and was looking for ways to strategically embed the arts in my work across North Lancashire and Cumbria. I’d heard about him on the grapevine and was thrilled when he agreed to be part of a steering group up that I sat on, that was planning an arts and health conference in Carlise in 2001. It seemed we were very different creatures, me all nervy and on the brink of histrionics and Mike - well - consistently calm, considered and so, so gentle. The conference was sold out and he was a great hit. Having been closely involved in the recent planning and completion of the Angel of the North in Gateshead, Mike had a certain mainstream arts cachet too!

Our second meeting was over in Dublin in 2004 shortly after I’d left the South West, where I’d been developing Arts for Health Cornwall, and was about to take up my position at MMU. This time, we met quietly and had time to discuss the growing international movement that we were part of and the characters that peppered it - some born of vision and committed to social change - and those shadowy figures, pursuing the market-driven dark-arts! He was candid and we enjoyed long conversations - his vast experience helping me navigate the fraught new arena that I was entering.

We met regularly and informally many times over the intervening years, but rather bizarrely, it was our time spent in Australia as the guest of Margret Meagher, that cemented our friendship. In 2009 her first International Arts and Health Conference, some 10,500 miles away from the northern climbs of England, brought Mike and I together in a way that we’d repeat almost annually up until last November. I have so many grand memories of his complete professionalism (what an ambassador for this field!) and his mischievousness - and his wonderful and always appropriate use of expletives! Walking back to hotels from conference venues in the heat of day and the dead of night, became a regular thing for us.

As members of the National Alliance for Arts and Health we did meet on UK soil, but it was the intimacy of time in Australia and his regular Critical Mass events that really got us thinking and acting as a wider community of interest. Mike regularly brought people together and effortlessly facilitated conversations on small and large scales and his Critical Mass events brought people around the globe together to actively peruse inquiries and develop practice. From these extended conversations sprang global friendships and some serious collaborative work.

Only last year and in the middle of his cancer treatment, did Mike come over to MMU to give us a suitably mischievous - but completely serious presentation - which he called - Randomised Thoughts, Controlled Ramblings and a few Trialised Thoughts! Exhausted from his cross-Pennine foray to the Manchester School of Art, Mike blew us away and opened his presentation with a booming youtube film of Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads, conjoining his early work by way of Welfare State International to the possibilities of generating new traditions - and sharing a wonderful anecdote about meeting the woman he would marry - and her slightly tipsy rendition of Psycho Killer to a nightclub full of people. Mike couldn’t half tell a quirky story.

Imploring us to share something of the spiritus mundi, Mike framed much of his presentation in David Byrne’s ‘slow dawning insight about creation,’ that 'context is everything.' Urging us to consider Bevan’s collective commitment to social habits and offering the best we can give to society, he subverted the context of health and safety from authoritative and risk-averse control, to caring for each other. His own work illustrated perfectly how investing in children and young people reaps dividends in generational change, not least in creating young researchers who inform new ways of thinking, being and doing.

Author of the seminal work in arts and community health “...A Social Tonic’, Mike remained committed to the principles of the Welfare State and a believer that creativity, culture and the arts were central to flourishing communities. His generosity imbued all he did with warmth, typified in those celebratory and conversational events he so often hosted.

Outside our community of arts/health, I often describe the positive working relationships that emerge from shared beliefs and vision, and how once a full moon, these spill over into real and deeper friendships. I’m proud to have had Mike’s friendship and wonder who I will look up to now? Always following in his footsteps, I will remember him as a man of superb intelligence - a knowledge born of experience - hysterically funny, warm and with the deepest integrity. A record-collector extraordinaire, a family man and a free-thinker. We will carry forward your ideas, but will miss your presence Mike White.

Post Script

We all have a gnawing anxiety about the eternity that stretches in front of us, and to a lesser extent, that which preceded our conception. I suppose that’s where religion offers some people comfort. For me it’s comforting to know that a billion, billion lives have lived and loved and thought and breathed-in all that is before (this here and now), and infinite moments will happen for unquantifiable lives to come. I wonder if we can take comfort in the earth and the sky and this simple privilege of our temporary existence? 

Reducing the Stigma of Addiction

Nora Volkow, MD, Director, NIDA

Addiction is common – an estimated 1 in 11 people in the United States experiences a substance use disorder in a given year. Despite significant advances in understanding and treatment, stigma still prevents many people from seeking help.

Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, speaking recently at the APA’s Annual Meeting in Toronto, talked about some of the recent advances in the understanding of addiction and called on psychiatrists to help reduce the stigma of addiction and “help to eliminate the shame and suffering that accompany the addict who experiences relapse after relapse after relapse.”

Volkow opened her speech with a moving and emotional story of how she learned of her grandfather’s alcoholism and suicide. He had died when she was a girl of 6 in Mexico, but Volkow’s mother did not reveal the truth of her grandfather’s addiction and death until many years later, when her mother was dying and after Volkow had already achieved distinction as an addiction expert.

It was a dramatic illustration of the despair experienced by people who have an addiction and continue to engage in a behavior that they may know is destroying them. She described how it was once believed that addiction was a disorder of hyperactive reward centers in the brain—that people with addiction s sought out drugs or alcohol because they were especially sensitive to the pleasure-inducing effects of dopamine.

But Volkow explained that in recent years research has revealed just the opposite: that those with addiction are actually less sensitive to the effects of dopamine. They seek out drugs because of the very potency with which they can increase dopamine in the brain, often at the expense of other pleasurable natural stimulants that do not increase dopamine so dramatically

Moreover, she emphasized that addiction to drugs disrupts multiple systems in the brain that govern the ability to plan, anticipate, and change behavior in response to changing circumstances. Volkow said it is this phenomenon that accounts for the “craving” experienced by addicts and alcoholics in response to environmental triggers—often leading to what she characterized in the account of her grandfather’s death as that “one last moment of self-hatred.”

Adapted from Psychiatric News

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

Welcome to another week and all that it holds. Welcome too, to the month of June. Elizabeth Windsor paid a visit to my home town on Friday which saw the streets lined with the impoverished masses, all flag-waving and thrilled to catch a glimpse of their rather sour-faced monarch in the pouring rain. The £3mill+ visit saw the cleaner-than-I've-ever-seen streets, empty of traffic for the first time in years, the air full of helicopters and high-visibility coppers staked out on roundabouts and every street corner. This was the same week too, as the ermine and diamond-encrusted speech to parliament, in which we heard her government (and shadow parties) talking about inequalities. What we need now, are policies to back this talk up.

For those of you who don't know the ancient hamlet of Lancaster, here's a vile portrayal of my local chip-shop, by our latter-day fauvist and peddler of simplistic Utopian trash (well, the same image is available on the chip shop's very own plastic bag - so proud). How I hope the 'artist' in question, produces a rendition of HRH tucking into a bag of scraps and curry sauce. 

Now - here’s an important short Public Service Announcement from Peggy Shaw

A Dementia and Imagination free event in Manchester

Tickets are now available for the free Dementia & Imagination event that’s being held on the 25th June at MMU. There are very limited places and will be an active day that really needs input, commitment and expertise from artists, clinicians, researchers and planners. We want to share our practice and inform future research and direction. So, if you want to hear from our research team, from our intervention and research artists and share your own ideas and practice, we’d love to hear from you. Tickets are available now by clicking on either Bette or Joan below. 

Women Make Music Grant Scheme 
The next applications deadline for the Performing Right Society's (PRS) Women Make Music grant scheme is 6pm on the 28th September 2015. Through the grant scheme, financial support of up to £5000 is available to women musicians to create new music in any genre. This can range from classical, jazz and experimental, to urban, electronica and pop. Through the scheme, support is available to individuals and organisations @ 

http://www.prsformusicfoundation.com/Funding/Women-Make-Music__

Five Ways to Wellbeing Toolkit
Voluntary Arts explore the Five Ways to Wellbeing model in their Toolkit, as a method for setting up and developing voluntary arts groups, and for making the experience of being a member even more enjoyable and beneficial to health and wellbeing. It is mainly aimed at people who are in a position of setting up a new voluntary arts group, or who want to invigorate an existing group by increasing involvement and basing it on solid foundations for enhancing the experience of members. Find the toolkit @

http://theloveofit.org/publications/Five%20Ways%20to%20Wellbeing%20Toolkit.pdf

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