Arts and health has been a key priority area of Arts OutWest over the last two decades.

In our strategic plan we aim to:

1. Extend the work in hospitals (includes MPS and MPU facilities) through a range of artforms and across many aspects of health (including dementia and disability)
2. Advise and support health sector workers to develop their programs and support strategic development
3. Build links with other service providers in the health sector
4. Support arts practitioners to be trained and aware of best practice approaches to working in health settings
5. Continue to take a leadership role in the sector (Eg. participation in the NSW/ACT Leadership Group).

Arts OutWest has a memorandum of understanding and a long term partnership with Western NSW Local Health District (WNSWLDH).

Individual project partners are listed with each project overview and case study (below).

AWARD WINNING PROJECTS

In both 2011 and 2012 Arts OutWest won the Arts and Health Australia International Award for ‘Arts and Health in Regional and Rural Australia’. Christine McMillan accepted the 2012 award at the Arts and Health Conference in Freemantle, WA, where she had also been invited to present on the Look Art Talk project. In 2013 Bathurst Regional Art Gallery won a Museums & Galleries NSW IMAGiNE Award for the partnership project with Arts OutWest, Look Art Talk.  In 2016 Arts OutWest and Lachlan Health Service’s Mali Marambir Ngurang: to make better place Lachlan  Aboriginal language signage project won the Chief Executive’s Award at the Western NSW Local Health District’s annual Living Well Together Health and Innovation Awards.