Acts and facts of culture: territories of practices, interdisciplinarity and actions in the art / health-promotion interface

Abstract

At the beginning of the 90's artistic and cultural activities became potent devices for social/cultural inclusion and participation of vulnerable populations and those at social risk. The activities with expression, creation and artistic and cultural production stimulate social inclusion/exclusion processes, articulate networking and trigger openings in the expressive and communicational net, thus allowing understanding experiences' singularity, defining ways of growth, differentiation, empowerment and collective participation. By researching and assessing the territory of said practices we can identify the configuration of an interdisciplinary field where artistic, educational, social, cultural and clinical actions are gathered and creates strategies of participation and communication in experiences we call actions in the Art / Health Promotion interface. Those are practices that may shorten the distance between subjects' singularities and their lack of information on their needs; they help to face frequent problems such as loneliness and isolation aggravated by lack of social spaces able to offer actual opportunities for people to share common interests. Contemporarily a new scenario is forming in the city's territory where new socializing opportunities are built and citizenship actions take place. The assessment conducted aims at gathering subjects round the artistic universe and cultural life; it revitalizes the participation of many actors in that process by expanding each one's possibilities of making connections and by acknowledging phenomena's fundamental interdependency.