Dr. DAISY FANCOURT

Daisy Fancourt. The work of Dr Daisy Fancourt has decisively contributed to prove the benefits of cultural activities for people’s health. She is Associate Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London. She studied at Oxford University and King’s College London before completing her PhD in psychoneuroimmunology at University College London. Her research focuses on the effects of social factors on health, including social deficits (e.g. loneliness and social isolation) and sociocultural assets (e.g. community engagement, arts & cultural activities, and social prescribing). Dr Daisy Fancourt is also the Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health (www.artshealthcc.org) as well as a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on cultural and behavioural insights on health.

The report “What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review”, based on the review of over 3000 studies was worldwide disseminated and acclaimed. The report and subsequent theoretical work from Dr Fancourt has shown that arts and culture combine many different components (‘active ingredients’) that are beneficial to health, for example involving the imagination, sensory activation, cognitive stimulation and social interaction. In further work published in the Lancet Psychiatry, Dr Fancourt has then shown that these components can prompt over 600 different psychological, physiological, social and behavioural mechanisms which are linked-in with the prevention, management and treatment of a range of different health conditions. Through Dr Fancourt’s publications, the beneficial impact of cultural activities has a renewed scientific evidence base. The promoting of artistic and cultural engagement at the individual, local and national levels is becoming essential in public policies for sustainable development.

See the biography of Dr. Daisy Fancourt.

See the article elaborated by Dr. Daisy Fancourt and her teams.

He has devoted his entire life to the preservation of the historical and cultural heritage of Cuba and of humanity. Dr Leal’s distinguished sensibility, as well as his early incursion into public administration, allowed him to understand the scope and value of the cultural heritage of cities, particularly Havana, both for its citizens and for the rest of the world. He is Honorary President of the Cuban Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and Honorary President of the Cuban Committee of ICOMOS and of the Civil Society Heritage, Community and Environment; Professor Emeritus of the University of Havana and Doctor Honoris Causa in various prestigious universities worldwide. He chairs the Network of Offices of the Historian and Conservator of the Heritage Cities of Cuba. Throughout his professional career
he has promoted the embodiment of the public space as a cultural space, preserving heritage as a common good through the restoration and conservation of the different works and projects he has been in charge of, with special emphasis on the Historical Centre of the city of Havana. Havana is today a complete and absolute symbol of this effort. For Dr Eusebio Leal, the city is highly representative of all the cultural, intellectual, political, historical and social values of the Cuban people, and it is also a great memory of the architectural development that succeeded in making Havana one of the most important post-colonial cities in Latin America.

He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and completed a professorial thesis on Political Ethics at the University of Strasbourg, France. Until 2016, he coordinated the Interdisciplinary Institute of Ethics and Human Rights (IIEDH) at the University of Fribourg, and he currently chairs the Observatory on Diversity and Cultural Rights (an IIEDH programme established in 2004) and the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Democracy, at the same university.

He is well-known for his work in the field of cultural rights at an international scale, as the main promoter of the Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights (2007), the result of 20 years of work by an international group of experts, known as ‘the Fribourg Group’, which fosters cultural rights within the human rights system. Patrice Meyer-Bisch has conducted research in several European and African countries.

He has significantly influenced the understanding of cultural diversity and cultural rights as ways to achieve inclusive sustainable development for everyone and in all areas, through the effective implementation of the interdependency of human rights. In the context of these activities, cultural rights are understood, alongside economic rights as well as civil, political and social rights, as the basis, the ‘grammar’, the space for interpretation, for the development of all individuals and societies.

Sociologist and activist, she is a member of the free independent collective Colectivx Ch’ixi in Bolivia. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has been professor of Sociology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz (UMSA), where she is now Emeritus Professor, and has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Columbia (New York, USA), Austin (Texas, USA), La Rábida (Huelva, Spain), Jujuy, and the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito, Ecuador). Along with other intellectuals, in 1983 she founded the Andean Oral History Workshop (THOA), a self-managed group which focuses on orality, identity and the indigenous and popular social movements, particularly in the Aymara region. In the last few years she has also been involved in the setting-up of El Tambo Colectivo, a cultural centre in La Paz which aims to combine academic knowledge, manual work and environmental practices. She is the author of several books, and she has also directed fiction and documentary videos and films. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s work deals with continuity in the logic of domination of indigenous identities and cultures, including in those contexts where diversity and the value of indigenous cultures have been officially recognised.

Website (in Spanish): www.colectivachixi.blogspot.com.es

Facebook (in Spanish): facebook.com/colectivxchixi