Feature
Heartstrings & Heartbeats: Exploring Mental Health Among Creative People
Gaborone | 20 November 2020
The Heartstrings and Heartbeats Project invites the media fraternity to the University of Botswana’s Faculty of medicine to introduce a project dubbed “Heartstrings and Heartbeats”, that explores mental health issues among creative people.
“Depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy $1 trillion every year in lost productivity – and take a terrible human toll. How can we build healthier workplaces that support mental health?“, World Economic Forum.
The two year multi-stakeholder public engagement project aims at exploring the science behind mental health issues among creatives while placing communities and those who are impacted and inflicted as drivers of their own solutions.
Thefirstphaseoftheprojectismeant to foster cultural relations between Danish and Batswana music artists as well as trigger dialogue on issues of mental health among creative people. This will culminate in a campaign to raise awareness among the public and inform research.
The second phase of the project will bring together stakeholders to co-create solutions that utilize action research to explore mental health among creative people.
This global public engagement project seeks to create knowledge exchange between scientists in Denmark and Botswana including collaboration on projects emerging from explorations of mental health issues affecting creative people.
The press conference will premier the two music tracks that fuses Botswana’s Four string Guitar and Danish Electronic Dance Music stimulate public discourse on mental health among creative people as well as the use of music as an effective public engagement tool. It is also hoped that twining global cultural IP and Scientific knowledge in this way can lead to solutions that reliably inform policy and initiation of exportable knowledge economy projects.
In addition to the support and collaboration from various stakeholders, Wellcome Trust, University of Botswana’s Faculty of Medicine, Infers Group, All Things Musical, Oceans, Industry Media, Duma FM, and The Dialogue Group, it is hoped that stakeholders will be attracted to invest in the future opportunities of the project.