GCC 1905: Art + Health Justice: Building Community Resilience

Exploring the power music has to address health inequalities and the social determinants of health and wellbeing, this text examines music participation as a determinant of wellbeing and as a transformative tool to impact on wider social, cultural and environmental conditions.

Taking the view that resilience is a process to be developed and nurtured rather than a hard-wired capacity of the individual, The Social Ecology of Resilience explains how interactions with school, family, community, and culture can provide ingredients for positive development. Case studies representing international and cross-disciplinary perspectives (e.g., Aboriginal youth in Australia, refugees in Sudan, and gay teens in the U.S.) demonstrate resilience across cultures and the lifespan. And interviews with healers and activists who have themselves survived trauma reveal resilience as a set of processes that can be both learned and taught.

This text demystifies systems set up for the protection and promotion of human rights globally, regionally and nationally. It explores the use and usefulness of rights-based approaches as an important part of the toolbox available to health and welfare professionals and community members working in a variety of settings to improve health and reduce health inequities.