University of Birmingham hosts events for city-wide Healing Arts programme

Birmingham will become the first city in England to host a globally recognised city-wide programme connecting art, culture and public health called Healing Arts, which will include events hosted by the University of Birmingham.

The week-long programme will see events taking place across neighbourhoods, suburbs, cultural venues and community spaces throughout the city.

Birmingham City Council and the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, are leading the landmark programme positioning Birmingham at the forefront of England’s thriving creative health movement.

As part of the programme, the University of Birmingham is hosting several events across the week, including:

• Uli painting workshop and talk - a workshop that explores what artistic practice can tell us about care, community, identity and how creative traditions can connect across generations.

• In conversation with Vanley Burke and Pat Noxolo - a relaxed daytime conversation with Vanley Burke, one of the most important figures in Black British photography, and Professor Pat Noxolo, Chair in Postcolonial Geographies.

• Story exchange: a new approach to fostering empathy – a two-hour workshop for students, patients and medical professionals to take part in an empathy-building exercise known as the ‘story exchange’.

• Pinhole camera workshop with Niki Gandy - Niki Gandy, Ikon Artist in Residence at HMP Birmingham (2025-26), lead an outdoor workshop where you can create your own image using a pinhole camera – a tiny, lens-free camera that captures images with natural light.

• Art, prisons and health symposium - the symposium includes a display of photographs from Project Phoenix and Project Athena, a co-collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Keele University, to provide personalised long-term support to people leaving prison and returning to North East Lincolnshire (NEL).

• Extending Nature: Beyond the tech — creative, clinical and community perspectives - an open gathering to discuss the exciting potentials and risk factors when developing new technologies across creative, clinical, and community settings.

Professor Sara Jones, Deputy Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer (Impact) & Academic Lead for Culture Forward at the University of Birmingham, said: “The University of Birmingham is very proud to be a core partner for Healing Arts Birmingham. Through the University's Culture Forward initiative - which draws together local cultural, creative and community sectors with our researchers, academics and students to further research, education and public engagement collaborations - we have coordinated a breadth of events, performances and workshops together as part of the HABrum programme, showcasing how our research across creative health makes a real-world impact to communities, families and the wider public in Birmingham and beyond.

“Healing Arts Birmingham is a superb vehicle to engage diverse audiences in what creative health means and the forms it takes, and to involve individuals in shaping their own wellbeing, and that of others, through visual arts, collections, performance, film and media.”

Building on the success of recent iterations in New York, Barcelona, and Singapore, Birmingham's week-long initiative will bring together the arts, culture and public health sectors. The diverse programme will include research symposia, exhibitions, concerts, community events, policy roundtables, and guided cultural tours exploring the role of arts in shaping healthier and more connected communities.

Additional events will be led by a coalition of local, national and international collaborators, including Arts Council England, Ikon Gallery, B:Music, Midland Arts Centre, National Centre for Creative Health, National Arts in Hospitals Network, CULTURUNNERS, New York University, Hospital Rooms, Department of Health and Social Care and Agder Kunstakademi.