Existential Resilience

ERiCi is cooperating with the Danish Center for Arts and Mental Health. It develops artistic formats for recovering from mental illnesses. The aim is to stimulate existential resilience through artistic participation, social engagement, play and joy in an ethical sustainable way. The Centre’s workshops are conducted by professional visual artists, authors, filmmakers and actors. The work is conducted in partnerships with national and regional health and art institutions to build bridges across sectors and epistemologies. The Centre also runs a research program that investigates the effects of art on mental health.

Birgit Ærenlund Bundesen, explains the importance of partnering with ERiCi, stating that ‘The international mental health crisis is not a solvable problem unless we move beyond the biomedical regime and address existential resilience – here art holds promise of offering a the third place between you and me, and between clinician and patient, where existential factors can unfold, be shared and maybe even renegotiated.’

For more information, please see https://ckms.dk/teamet/ and https://research.regionh.dk/da/persons/birgit-bundesen/publications/

17 October 2023

existentialresilience

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Lund municipality, which is a cooperation partner of ERiCi, has strong interest in existential resilience. This is expressed in its culture policy, which states:

“We live in seemingly contradictory times – increasingly warning signs appear, while most things seem as usual. On an intellectual level, we understand that we humans have created the situation we find ourselves in, but we also know that we carry its solution, the key to change. We know that facts alone will not make us change course, we need to be touched and feel that there is hope and meaning.”

The municipality’s cultural work and cooperation with ERiCi is based on this understanding, to ultimately support a more resilient and sustainable society.

16 October 2023

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The Existential Resilience Collaboration Initiative ERiCi explores the role of contemplation, aesthetics and compassion to counter stress, fragmentation and the loss of meaning that underlie today’s societal crises, with the ultimate aim is to increase individual, collective and planetary wellbeing.

Human beings carry within them the ability, developed through evolution, to find meaning in existence. Its core is their experience and understanding of themselves as part of larger communities, human as well as spiritual and planetary. Today, when sick-leave due to stress is on the rise, and crises, from war to ecological collapse threaten the foundation of society, our inner power to create and feel meaningfulness in life is more crucial than ever! This relates not only to coping with stress and threats, but also to collaboratively finding solutions to their underlying causes.

Contemplation – to raise our gaze above purely instrumental concerns; Aesthetics – to see and care for beauty in what exists around us; and Compassion – to bond with others and the more-than-human world, are three paths to meaning-making, which can free individuals from self-encapsulation, make them see their role and agency, and ignite the urge to take responsibility for supporting sustainability and wellbeing across individual, collective, and system levels.

ERiCi explores these intertwined paths with a special focus on integrating them in education and professional practice across different sectors and levels in society. For more information, see the initiative’s institutional website at Lund University (lu.se/erici) and a recent article about ERiCi here.

Cooperation partners include around 20 organisations from different fields, with a focus on healthcare, arts, education, and sustainability.

15 September 2023

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In the beginning of 2023, we started out joint journey with an interactive kick-off meeting. The aim of the meeting was to get a better understanding and also a better feeling of: –Who we are, –What the project is about, and –How we can support each other in a meaningful way.

To do so, we started with some warm-up questions, followed by a short project presentation, before we engaged in a more interactive and experiential way in our three project components: -Contemplation, -Compassion, and -Aesthetics.

Finally, we reflected together about related aspects: -Their meaning, -Their relevance, -And ways to cooperate around these issues.

The kick-off meeting ended with an outlook, to get going and continue with our joint journey. What an exciting day we had together!!!

Existential Resilience

Our Partner the ‘Danish Center for Arts and Mental Health’

Meet our partner ‘Lund municipality’

The Existential Resilience Collaboration Initiative ERiCi

Interactive Kick-off Meeting