Project: NSW Health and the Arts Framework
Organisation: Arts NSW
Place: New South Wales
Year: 2015-2016
Project Type: Strategy, Policy & Research
In 2015-2016 Kim Spinks, now director of City People, led the team which collaborated with NSW Health to develop New South Wales’ first ever arts and health framework. The Framework was released in 2016 and aims to improve the health of the community through integrating the arts into the design and delivery of health services and public health messaging.
It provides the official Health Ministry policy guidelines for NSW Health services to:
- Improve the patient, staff and carer experience in health services through engagement with the arts in the broadest sense
- Create a sense of place in health services, enhancing design and ‘way finding’ – the ways in which people orient themselves and navigate through a health service
- Leverage the arts as a mechanism for engaging communities with health services
- Promote health messages through the arts
- Increase access to the arts through health services
- Foster sustainable partnerships between the health and arts sectors, and
- Integrate the arts into the design of new spaces.
The Framework has already led to new initiatives in 2017 such as the Guidelines for Visual Art Programs in NSW Health Services Facilities and consultation on an arts and cultural strategy for the redevelopment of Westmead Hospital.