The arts as part of recovery: When statutory healthcare, community and service users meet (Denmark) Birgit Bundesen, psychiatrist and founder of the Danish Centre for Arts and Mental Health in Copenhagen, Denmark at the 5th edition of the OECD Summer Academy on Cultural and Creayive Industries and Local Development, 2022. More info https://oe.cd/sacci

1. The Danish Centre for Arts and
Mental Health (DCAMH) as a
hybrid between a community
based and mental health care
facility
Challenges in an expanding
interdisciplinary field
Birgit Bundesen
Psychiatrist
BA comparative literature
Mental Health care Centre Amager,
Copenhagen
Founder of Danish Centre for Arts and
Mental Health

2. The problem
of false
statements
•Art and culture do not (just)
have positive effects
•Do no harm!

3. The problem
of low
quality
research
• Danger of lowest common
denominator
• Evaluation need to take complexity of
implementation into consideration
(Skivington K, Matthews L, Simpson SA, et al.
Framework for the development and evaluation of
complex interventions: Gap analysis, workshop and
consultation-informed update. Health Technol Assess
(Rockv). 2021;25(57):i-132. doi:10.3310/HTA25570 )
• Need for BOTH scientific rigor and
reflection > abductive methodology
• Need for structured interventions
securing reproducibility.

4. The problem of
true
interdisciplinarity
• Dichotomized epistemologies divide culture,
arts and health: explaing vs understanding
• Finding a common language is first step:
common goals
• Inventing new appropriate evaluation
methods: evidence vs holistic understanding
• Focus on sustainability: integration of
positivistic evidence and rigour with
qualitative richness of the particular and
circumstantial.

5. The problem
of true
participation
• Top down vs bottom up
• Participation contested concept didactically,
artistically and in health services
• Interventions need service user qualification:
subjective vs objective recovery
• Inclusion of service users necessary but
problematic > needs special programmes

6. The manualized
participatory creative
writing workshops in
REWRITALIZE
• Hybrid between an art workshop and a
group therapeutic intervention
• Adjuvant to treatment as usual
• Conductor is a professional author
• Mental health care co-therapist
• Manualized 14+1 week (booster after 1
month)
• Designed with start, middle and end
according to psychodynamic principles
• Creative writing exercises: Writing on the
spot, 5-15 min > reading the text out loud
> receiving comments.

7. Participatory
creative
writing
groups
• Artistic participation
• Socially structured space with clear rules and roles
• The creative texts as transitional phenomena
• Fiction and poetry bypass normative rules > allowing
sharing and negotiation of (abnormal) experiences
• Illness-free space > showing and talking about illness
is allowed but not in focus > reduction of self-stigma
• The creative texts as indirect sharing > transitional
phenomena
• Personal and collective reflective space (stimulation of
symbolization)
• Spaces for regaining agency and sense of selfhood
• Resonance with self, others and texts
• Mixed method methodology

8. Mental health and
recovery
Participatory art workshops, Hospital radio, Art Intime Exhibitions,
Open Scene platform
Structured social recovery spaces allow compensatory social
strategies
Artistic, illness free space > holding enviroment > play > narrative
sensitivity/mentalization
Renegotiation of symptoms and identity
Recovery of agency and positive sense of self
New true interdisciplinary projects and research methods needed

9. Danish Centre
for Arts and
Mental Health
ckms.dk