Arts on Prescription (AoP) in the Baltic Sea Region is among the finalists for the European Social Services Awards 2026, in the category Public Sector Collaboration in Social Services.

Arts, health and social services working together

Arts on Prescription offers people living with stress, anxiety, depression or loneliness a place in a group activity run by artists and cultural institution to improve their mental wellbeing and social connection. Between 2023 and 2025, the programme was piloted in six municipalities and two regions across five countries, and the learning was set down in a practitioner’s guide. Getting there meant health services, social services and cultural institutions planning something together, across professional cultures that rarely meet. That is what this award category recognises.

From a successful project to regional policy

The nomination is also significant for the platform. Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region is one of the projects whose results the BSR Mental Health Platform consolidates, and it contributes to the platform’s work on the benefits of arts and culture for mental health. Odense Municipality is also a partner in the platform, carrying its experience from the project into our work. The platform brings together the results of projects such as this one and develops them into policy recommendations on cross-sectoral approaches to mental health in the Baltic Sea Region.

“Having been part of the AoP partnership ourselves, we saw how much work goes into getting health, social services and culture to build something jointly,” says Ülla-Karin Nurm, Director of the NDPHS Secretariat, which coordinates Policy Area Health of the EUSBSR and leads the platform. “Arts on Prescription is a good example of what a cross-sectoral response to mental health can look like in practice, and this is the kind of social innovation our health and social systems need. The harder question is what has to change so that it becomes possible elsewhere, in other countries and with other sectors. That is what we are working on in the platform, and a project that has already shown it can be transferred gives us a great deal to work with.”

 

Winners to be announced in Rome

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in Rome on 19 – 20 November 2026, hosted by Regione Lazio. Congratulations and fingers crossed to Odense Municipality and to all the Arts on Prescription partners!

Read more about the award category and the other finalists: https://connect.esn-eu.org/public/conference/84/page/

Read more about the AoP project: https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/arts-on-prescription/