Access Alliance Arts for Family Health

Welcome to Access Alliance Arts for Family Health!

Arts for Family Health is a project of Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services, dedicated to promoting the role of the arts in supporting the mental health and well-being of newcomer individuals and families. Creative practices including literary, visual, movement, theatre, and sound arts can offer safe, culturally sensitive ways for newcomers to express emotions, process trauma, and build community connections in their new environment.

This digital platform serves as a central source of knowledge for practitioners, management, researchers and academics seeking to integrate or learn more about arts-based mental health interventions. By sharing knowledge and best practices, we aim to strengthen the integration of arts-based approaches across newcomer services and support systems.

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Featured resources

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Research Papers

A fRAmework of the DetermInants of Arts aNd Cultural Engagement (RADIANCE)

Learn more about a new framework of individual, local and societal factors affecting arts & cultural engagement for health
Toolkits & Handbooks

Arts and health evaluation: Navigating the landscape

Learn more about a comprehensive mapping of what arts and health evaluation frameworks and toolkits exist, and advice for anyone wishing to evaluate their own project.
Research Papers

Expressive arts therapy research

This research paper explores how newcomer women in Toronto, of specific linguistic and social identity backgrounds, encounter unique and unspoken challenges related to domestic violence and trauma.
HEAL Resources

Findings and impact

The findings highlight trauma-informed expressive arts interventions improved well-being, strengthened coping skills, and increased knowledge, confidence, and safety among newcomer survivors of domestic and family violence.
HEAL Resources

Healing arts for newcomer well-being event

This set of documents summarizes the purpose, context, and key learnings behind the Healing Arts for Newcomer Family Wellbeing event.
How to Guides

Hiring arts-based facilitators

Hiring art based facilitators are essential for the sustainability for expressive art programs, read more on how to hiring an art based facilitator for your organization.
How to Guides

Mapping global arts and health policy

Learn more about tracking and analysing how arts and health policy is developing around the world by the social biobehavioural research group.
HEAL Resources

Milestone reports

Milestone reports capture key moments in the development of the HEAL Project. They document progress each year, highlight successes, and reflect the growing collaboration across the arts, settlement, and healthcare sectors.

What's happening

Creative care webinar series

This six-part webinar series focused on advancing arts integration in healthcare and settlement. This series emerged from the Hubs of Expressive Arts for Life (HEAL) Project.

Watch the webinar series 

HEAL project summative report

This report reflects project milestones and findings from April 2022 to March 2026. It provides an overview of the main project components, the effectiveness, and shares findings from data collected from newcomer women survivors of gender-based domestic violence (GBDV).

Click here to view

Collective gallery booklet: Notice, observe, and feel

These Gallery Booklets feature visual insights into 12 collective paintings produced from the HEAL Programs.

Click here to view

This website was co-created by LaunchBox, Christen Kong, Jasmine Sidhu, Marco Campana, Lana Cho, Shruthi Anna Thomas, and Victor Szeto. We would also like to acknowledge and thank all placement students, volunteers, and contributors from Access Alliance.  

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