What if a cultural experience can be just as valuable as a consultation?
What if art doesn’t just inspire, but also contributes to greater resilience, connection, and well-being?
With Art on Prescription (AOP), cultural, care, and well-being organizations are jointly building new pathways to mental well-being. People struggling with stress, anxiety, loneliness, or other psychosocial challenges can participate in guided cultural trajectories through primary care and well-being professionals. Not in a clinical setting, but in places where encounter, imagination, and personal growth take center stage.
In Leuven, this approach has been developed over the past years by PARCUM through the trajectory Strength from Art. The positive experiences show how art and culture can reconnect people with themselves, with others, and with society. Building on this expertise, we are now taking the next step toward scaling up locally with new partners: Het Depot and Vesalius Museum, as well as a supra-local collaboration.
“It’s not the diagnosis, but the potential that takes center stage.”
Together with cultural institutions, artists, care and well-being professionals, we are developing a shared framework for Art on Prescription, testing new methods, and building knowledge that can be widely applied within the cultural and well-being sectors. By bringing together experiences from different cities, we not only strengthen local trajectories but also create a sustainable model that can inspire other organizations.
A project with Body & Soul
Within the Humanatorium Body & Soul, Art on Prescription finds a natural place. Body & Soul explores how, as a society, we can contribute to human flourishing, with attention to physical, mental, and social well-being. Art on Prescription makes this ambition concrete. It connects culture, care, and well-being around a shared conviction: that meaningful cultural experiences make people more resilient, open new perspectives, and contribute to a more connected society.
By scaling local expertise and linking it to supra-local collaboration, we are building a network in which art and culture do more than inspire. They play an active role in well-being, participation, and quality of life.
Body & Soul, Europe’s first Humanatorium
How can we, as human beings, truly flourish in body and mind — how can we build resilience, create places of happiness, and use movement in a world full of change? That’s the central question behind Body & Soul.