When Arts meet health
Creative health communication
Art isn't just entertainment—it's a powerful tool for positive change! That's the belief behind When The Arts Meet Health…, a groundbreaking initiative in Africa. Combining music, drama, and cultural understanding, we're tackling the social and cultural barriers that prevent people from getting the eye care they need – one at a time. Imagine educational videos packed with hope, music, and practical guidance, reaching people in Africa! This is the future of health education, and it's happening right now.
Child Eye care
The Jig of Life
Older carers play a vital yet often invisible role in sustaining families, communities, and health systems. Many provide continuous care with limited recognition or support, while simultaneously managing exhaustion, social isolation, and their own physical and emotional health challenges. Despite their immense contribution, their lived experiences, humour, resilience, emotions, and aspirations are seldom acknowledged or meaningfully represented. Through participatory music workshops with carers attending Newington Day Centre, this project, led by the Oh Yeah! Music Centre and supported by the team, will collaboratively create an original song centred on hope, dignity, and joy, shaped directly by carers’ own stories and voices. Working alongside musicians, researchers, and community partners, the project will explore how music can function as a powerful medium for storytelling, social connection, emotional expression, and collective healing, while affirming the value and visibility of carers within society. The final composition will be professionally recorded and preserved within a digital archive celebrating the voices and experiences of carers in Belfast. At its core, the project recognises that research is not always about statistics or publications; sometimes it is about creating meaningful spaces where people feel heard, valued, and seen.
This scoping review explores the types and characteristics of school-based eye health interventions implemented in low- and middle-income countries to improve children’s access to eye care services and increase compliance with spectacle wear. The review identified a wide range of interventions, including vision screening conducted by teachers or health workers, eye health education programmes, free or low-cost spectacle provision, parental engagement activities, and follow-up mechanisms to support spectacle use. Across the included studies, many interventions reported improvements in eye care uptake, referral attendance, and spectacle compliance among schoolchildren, although the approaches, study quality, and outcome measures varied considerably. The review highlights the growing interest in integrated school eye health programmes while emphasising the need for more robust evidence on sustainability, effectiveness, and implementation within resource-constrained settings.
Meet the Vision Champions—kids leading the charge for eye health in rural Bariadi, Tanzania! These young heroes reached over 6,000 people with eye care messages, screened 7,575 individuals, and referred 2,433 for treatment. Thanks to them, awareness about avoiding non-prescribed eye ointments jumped 14%, and the importance of using only doctor-prescribed eye drops soared by 17%. Talk about a sight for sore eyes!
Who knew music could help open eyes—literally! In Zanzibar, we found that suspicions around Western medicine led people to stick to traditional remedies, even if they were less effective. When posters promoting eye health were taken down from schools, rejection from the community followed. Enter the Zanzibar Arts for Children’s Eyesight project! We're exploring whether catchy tunes, both traditional and modern, can break through social and cultural barriers, helping kids get the eye care they need.
he study used a pilot randomised design to compare referral uptake between children exposed to music-based health education and those receiving standard communication approaches. Findings suggested that musical messaging showed promise in increasing parental engagement and improving uptake of follow-up eye care services for children identified with potential eye problems. The study also explored the feasibility and acceptability of using arts-based approaches within community eye health programmes and highlighted the need for a larger definitive trial to assess effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.
Get ready for an exhilarating adventure with Watch! Debunk! Act! Dive into the vibrant and transformative world of this groundbreaking project, where local artists explore the lives of people with vision impairments through captivating photo diaries. These diaries will be transformed into an eye health education blockbuster experience, right in the heart of Zanzibar. Don’t miss out on this incredible journey of discovery and enlightenment!
Get ready for African Creativity for Eyesight! This project brings together an energetic, multi-talented team to co-create arts-based eye health education. We will blend free-hand animation, and voice drama to break down cultural barriers and improve eye care for kids and adults. Now, we're expanding to Dodoma, mainland Tanzania, aiming to use this creative approach and boost eye health across Africa—because healthier eyes mean brighter futures!