Arts and Health is an interdisciplinary field integrating creative practices into community and care settings, aiming to transform health and experiences of healthcare. Field study guest contributor Salty Xi Jie Ng chats with Michael Tan—creative health practitioner, researcher and educator—about this promising field.
Fresh from her sabbatical and as the new Co-Artistic Director of Drama Box, Han Xuemei shares her underlying philosophies that guide her work with communities in our interview with her. Built into her practice with engaging communities is an innate sense of being human that forms the foundation to the relationships involved. Alongside her reflections on this, she offers advice to those wishing to begin working with communities using arts processes.
Pre-Covid-19, socially engaged artist and interdisciplinary practitioner Fié Neo was journeying across America and Europe, where she started and contributed to projects driven by important causes. Back in Singapore now, Fié has many reflections on what she has learnt in her travels: both the beauty and the hard parts of working in, and with communities and wider systems. Get to know Fié, her work and reflections in this interview.
What is the relationship between art and community development? What place does the artistic voice occupy within the latter?
What is creative placemaking? Why does it matter for practitioners and policy-makers working in spaces and with people to know that they are inescapably part of a larger ecosystem?