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Promoting Health and Innovative Health Promotion Practice Through a Community Arts Centre

University of Victoria in Victoria, Canada, Promoting Action Toward Health (PATH) project in Victoria, British Columbia

Neena L. Chappell, PhD, FRSC

Centre on Aging and Department of Sociology, University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia

Carolyn J. Knight

Quadra Arts Centre in Victoria, British Columbia

The salubrious effects of participation in and exposure to the arts are well documented. This paper describes the development of a unique arts centre established in a disadvantaged urban school setting as part of a larger community-based health promotion research project. The discussion highlights how community-based arts programming may impact health not only through positive effects on "upstream" non-medical health determinants, particularly aspects of social support, but also through its ability to facilitate the more traditional health-promotion initiatives of the larger parent project. Also discussed is this centre's potential to act as a catalyst to achieve the overarching project goal of enhanced community health by building constitutive capacity around positive aspects of the community, rather than focusing on capacity only as an instrumental resource to solve social or health problems. Greater incorporation of the arts within health-promotion projects offers potential to enhance both health promotion practice and outcomes.

Key Words: health promotion • community-based arts programs • population health • social ecology • community capacity • arts and health

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This version was published on October 1, 2007

Health Promotion Practice, Vol. 8, No. 4, 366-374 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1524839906289342


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Carson, A. J. Articles by Knight, C. J. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Carson, A. J. Articles by Knight, C. J. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?