Hamwe has announced its first Board of Advisors.
UGHE believes that building bridges across sectors is a necessity to sustainably transform health education and delivery globally, but also to eliminate the gap between the most and least disadvantaged.
During the past two years, UGHE had incubated a series of projects looking at the role and contributions of culture and arts in individual and community health as well as in generating health outcomes and engaging the public about health and wellbeing. As part of those projects, UGHE created Hamwe Festival in 2019, a platform bringing the health sector together with creative industries annually, with the dual mission to create an enabling environment for strong collaboration between the health and creative sectors, as well as to generate new insights into global health challenges and corresponding solutions, using the unique and complementary vantage points of creative and global health professionals.
After two years of existence, Hamwe Festival has proven its value by engaging a global audience, but also by hosting innovative high-quality creative global health content generating large scale conversations on topics such as health equity, mental health, arts in health research and others.
The festival’s second edition in 2020, was held virtually across five day, offering a global platform to discuss Social Justice and Mental Health through the lens of patients, clinicians, researchers, artists and the general public. Three digital exhibitions were presented, with 36 sessions uniting participants from five continents and engaging an audience of more than 26,000 people from 50 countries.
Acknowledging this success, during the first quarter of 2021 UGHE institutionalized Hamwe Festival and other arts in health activities, that transitioned from project in incubation to a university department.
The Arts & Culture in Global Health Public Engagement responsibilities will contribute to UGHE’s mission and to the achievements of the institution’s objectives by engaging the general public and global health communities on current global health issues through arts and cultural activities to sensitize and increase understanding on those global health issues, as well as to generate new insights into global health challenges and their corresponding solutions. One of the department’s main responsibilities will be to plan and implement Hamwe Festival, however the department will implement research projects, community engagement activities and other arts-in-health projects.
To support the new department in the achievement of its mission, UGHE will put a board of external advisors in place. The role of the board will be to support the growth of the festival, extend its reach and contribution to identifying innovative perspectives and creative solutions in global heath.
Find out more about the Team of Advisors here
