European Culture and Health Hub – A Collaborative Platform Enhancing Arts, Culture, and Health Policies, Practice, and Research – ECHH

Arts and culture integrated into public health

Project Duration

1.6.2026 – 31.5.2029

Source of Funding

Horizon Europe

Total Funding

€1,992,487

The European Culture and Health Hub (ECHH) is a Horizon Europe project that aims to integrate the arts and culture into Europe’s health agenda.

Europe is facing growing pressures on mental health and wellbeing, alongside rising levels of loneliness, social isolation, and the challenges of an ageing population. Arts and culture have real potential to help, yet this remains underused in mainstream health policy.

A key aim of the European Culture and Health Hub (ECHH) project is to connect policymakers and practitioners across culture, health, social care, education, humanitarian and youth sectors to build stronger collaboration. Our aim is to further understanding of how engagement with the arts and culture can contribute to population health and wellbeing across these different sectors. Ultimately, the project strives for creating a momentum for broader systemic change: embedding arts and culture more deeply in public health approaches at European, national, regional and local levels.

To achieve its goals, ECHH focuses on:

1. Strengthening the evidence base underpinning culture and health policy and practice via producing three broad online evidence gap maps
2. Fostering the implementation, adaptation and replication of the best cross-sectoral culture and health practices via evaluations and training
3. Increasing awareness of the impacts of arts and culture on health, wellbeing and social inclusion among policymakers and practitioners across sectors at European, national, regional and local levels by implementing a wide reach awareness raising campaign, and targeted awareness raising sessions
4. Fostering policy discussions, knowledge exchange and cross-sectoral cooperation among policymakers, professionals and academics across culture, health, social care, humanitarian, youth and education sectors through a dedicated interdisciplinary, interactive, hybrid platform European Culture and Health Hub
5. Equipping the policymakers with recommendations and practical guidelines to implement sustainable cross-sectoral policies and programmes in the field of culture and health.