The Eixart. Art and Health program brings art and creativity to primary care centers.

The Government of Catalonia has launched the first round of the Eixart. Art and Health program, a joint initiative of the Departments of Culture and Health that aims to bring contemporary art closer to primary care centers and their users. Three artists have participated in this first edition to create a research and creation project at the primary care centers in Lleida, Amposta, and Vic. Eixart seeks to create meeting spaces for users of primary care centers, family members, healthcare professionals, and creators, facilitating the community's active participation in the artistic process and in the exchange between the cultural and healthcare worlds.

The program is inspired by international studies that recognize the role of the arts in the prevention and treatment of various diseases, including report from the World Health Organization in 2019. The research revealed that participating in arts activities can reduce social isolation, improve mental health, and help manage chronic pain.

Three CAPs, three artists, three arts centers

The CAP of Amposta has participated in collaboration with Lo Pati - Art Center of the Terres de l'Ebre and the artist Laia Solé, with a project entitled Ecosystems of care, which revolves around caregiving, a feminized form of labor that is often left out of representative spaces.

The proposal seeks to give visibility to this essential work, engaging participants in a creative and reflective process about caregiving and its social value. Ecosystems of care has culminated in a book publication by the artist.

The CAP El Remei de Vic has also participated, with ACVIC Contemporary Arts Centers, coordinated by the artist Xènia Canal, who have worked on the project Pain, remedies and care. Xènia Canal focuses on the different social and cosmological representations surrounding pain and the knowledge of immigrant women and women with chronic pain. The research questions what we understand by pain, whether each community understands it the same way, and how it is expressed in each territory.

Finally, in Lleida, the Centro de Arte la Panera and the CAP Bordeta Magraners, with the help of artist Gemma París, have worked on the project On the margins; which combines art, health, agriculture, and sewing to build community among people who live alone. The proposal revolves around weeds, species that grow freely on the margins of the norm, civilization, and human control, reclaiming them as necessary for the coexistence of different species.

A network

Each project has had a driving group made up of representatives from the art center, the corresponding CAP, the Department of Culture and the Public Health Agency of Catalonia, and the curator Roser Sanjuan. The objective is to explore how the visual arts and creative processes can become a tool for collective health and well-being, beyond conventional medical care.

This initiative is part of the Interdepartmental and Intersectoral Public Health Plan (PINSAP) of the Generalitat of Catalonia, which is committed to incorporating non-pharmacological interventions and social prescriptions from primary care. binomial art and health presents many examples where joint actions have had a positive impact on the health and well-being of the population.