During the autumn of 2020, the Cluj Cultural Centre implemented a pilot project of cultural prescriptions, offering participation in a series of specially designed creative workshops to a group of people suffering from burnout. The creative activities were then delivered to a group of mainly young professionals by a team of artists from Create.Act.Enjoy, a Cluj based NGO known for their Art Therapy project, a unique intervention model taking place annually in hospitals across Romania.
This year, after the promising results of our pilot project and as part of their ongoing activity, Create.Act.Enjoy is very keen on carrying on the work started with people suffering from burnout and is organizing workshops to reduce the symptoms of burnout among hospital staff. The aim of the artistic activities proposed is to try to combat the mental exhaustion of medical staff who have been fighting the COVID-19 pandemic for about a year and a half. Their first initiative was in the Sălaj County Hospital, but they are aiming to reach seven hospitals across Cluj-Napoca by the end of this year.
Cluj Cultural Centre will accompany their programme by measuring the impact of the artistic intervention on hospital staff’s well-being through quantitative techniques. The goal is to further understand how art impacts the burnout symptoms and the well-being of people working in exhausting environments.
Our initial findings demonstrated that art can potentially decrease burnout rates, increase well-being and inspire people to develop their creative potential. The experience of cultural prescriptions for burnout was an opportunity for artists and researchers to work together and co-design a programme that can potentially be developed in a large-scale programme providing more and more people tools and means to fight burnout symptoms. So we are looking forward to seeing what the results of our partners from Create.Act.Enjoy will be at the end of their mission in Romanian hospitals.
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