Arts in the City

The Arts in the City project aims to understand and enhance the social-cultural urban infrastructure in two cities in South America: Salvador (Brazil) and Cochabamba (Bolivia). The project is led by an international team from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Bolivia from across the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and urban planning sectors, in partnership with established charities.

We are investigating whether active engagement with the arts through participatory musical encounters can change peoples’ perceptions of their own social connectedness, loneliness, and social wellbeing and promote integration across the divide of otherness in Salvador and Cochabamba.

In contrast to urban advancement in developed countries, the social infrastructure of overpopulated cities in the Global South remains a challenge, with unequal income-distribution and societal boundaries in these cities leading to isolation, loneliness, and poor health and wellbeing.

This project explores how the growing evidence that the arts can promote wellbeing and social connectedness may be applied within the context of the Global South. It uses large-scale surveys to ascertain citizens’ experiences of social-cultural engagement and how this is associated with public wellbeing in both Salvador and Cochabamba. Music interventions are then used to engage a sub-group of citizens who self-define as ‘othered’ and isolated, despite living in overcrowded urban spaces. In particular, the intervention aims to integrate families of those with disabilities across the divide of urban otherness, with mixed methods employed to investigate its effectiveness.

Our findings are being used to inform policymaking, urban planning, and social-cultural infrastructure for a ‘good city’ and advance the evidence base for the importance of the arts for wellbeing in the context of the Global South.