Fulbright scholar and QUT researcher Associate Professor Donna Hancox will head to the USA this month to investigate new ways for arts and culture to support individual and community wellbeing, including combatting an epidemic of loneliness that has been exacerbated by COVID.
Associate Professor Hancox’s prestigious Fulbright Senior Scholarship will enable her to work with the world-leading Centre for the Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida.
She said the challenges and crises of the COVID-19 pandemic had prompted a rethink on how to better care for people through place-based programs in their neighbourhoods.
The US research trip is part of her project to build a population-level analysis of the impact of the arts on communities in the UK and North America and participate in community engagement in underrepresented communities in Florida to amplify arts and culture for community wellbeing.
Her research will also inform a national Australian arts and cultural event that aims to rebuild social cohesion during times of crisis and will be based on a US project rolling out this year.
Fulbright Australia is a non-profit organisation sponsored by the US and Australian governments and other institutional and business partners, private bequests and endowments, which aims to develop long-lasting, productive bilateral relations, partnerships and connections.
“COVID-19 continues to lay bare the importance of the health sector to explore the feasibility and suitability of arts interventions to improve people’s wellbeing,” said Associate Professor Hancox (pictured above), who is a researcher with QUT’s School of Creative Practice.
“Benefits of participating in arts and cultural activities can be found in a range of settings including hospitals, medical centres, aged care facilities, community health facilities and community settings.”
Associate Professor Hancox said Australia lagged in terms of large-scale collaborative interdisciplinary creative arts and public health research.
“What I think is currently missing about the ways in which we think about arts and health is that we think of arts as something we receive, or go and see, and health as an individual issue,” she said.
“We think of the arts as something that we do for fun, or entertainment, rather than thinking about it as a core part of our lives, as the lifeblood of our communities, and as a crucial part of our social connections, our sense of belonging and the wellbeing of our communities.”
Associate Professor Hancox’s research career has focused on how the arts and culture make a social impact in marginalised communities – particularly regional and rural, refugee and asylum seeker and low socio-economic communities.
She said the Fulbright scholarship represented “a once in a lifetime opportunity” to work with the world leaders in the field of arts and culture in health care and community settings for wellbeing.
After having her initial travel plans for the 2021-2022 scholarship delayed, she is now flying out to Gainesville, Florida, on March 29 and will spend three months in the US.
“I hope to get experience and insights from the projects I’ll be collaborating on in the US and bring those models back to Australia to inform our policy and innovate the ways in which we think about arts and culture as profound tools for a healthy and resilient country,” she said.
