Fibonacci Forum: Creative Communities and Cultural Wellbeing Framework

The Fibonacci Forum Cultural Wellbeing Research engaged with 130 cultural practitioners from 8 sectors to investigate the Cultural Wellbeing Framework within community. In each forum community practitioners presented their work and commented on how it related to the framework. In this way the forums could illuminate how important it is to understand and consider the wellbeing needs of a community. The framework is thus an important tool with which to evaluate the wellbeing needs of communities and also to document what is already being done. Therefore, the forums, together with the framework, were able to instigate conversations about wellbeing and potentially germinate new projects that embed cultural wellbeing from the start. Curating the forums (who was asked and why) brought in changemakers who were committed to bringing together arts and wellbeing with innovative strategies and models of creative expression that can send a community message about lived wellbeing. The research found that while many individual researchers and cultural practitioners incorporate arts, culture and wellbeing outcomes in their work, there is currently no Australian State or National body for Cultural Wellbeing. Such a body would make it easier for researchers and practitioners to advocate for the creative cultural wellbeing needs of their communities and work in a cross-sectoral way to address societal inequalities.