Place and Displacement: reconnecting to the world through the arts

Forcibly displaced populations have surged around the world due to everything from conflict to climate crisis. Forced displacement generates health related challenges like shelter and food to broader psychosocial issues of trauma, whose effects can even have intergenerational impacts.

This panel will discuss how the arts have been used to help reconnect forcibly displaced peoples cope with their new circumstances, process their sense of loss, and begin the journey to imagining a more hopeful future.

Relevant books on this topic are available to order and collect from our online shop (with a 10% discount).

Chair: Clare Adamson MSP, Convener, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Panellists:

Christopher Bailey is the Arts and Health lead at the World Health Organization and a co-founder of the Jameel Arts and Health Lab. After a career as a professional actor and playwright, Bailey joined the Rockefeller Foundation as their research manager, and from there was recruited to WHO where he leads the Health Informatics work and later their on-line communications team before starting the Arts and Health program. The basic message of his work is to amplify the WHO definition of health which is not merely the absence of disease and infirmity, but the attainment of the highest level of physical, mental and social wellbeing.

Sangeeta Isvaran is the founder of the Wind Dancers Trust and is a dancer-performer who developed the Katradi method, working in marginalized, underprivileged communities using arts in education, empowerment and conflict resolution across 30 countries. She has been honoured with the highest national award for young dancers – the Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar. She is a fellow of the International Institute of Conciliation, USA, and is an honorary associate of the Nature Conservation Foundation, India.

Dr David Caesar is associate medical director, NHS Lothian. He has been an emergency medicine consultant since 2006 and has served as interim deputy chief medical officer and senior strategic advisor for Health Workforce in Scottish Government. He led the implementation of the Scottish Trauma Network and the Leadership & Talent Management Strategy. He is a clinical advisor to Scottish Ballet’s Dance Health Programme, a trustee of the Medic 1 Charity, and has a forgiving wife and 3 children.