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  2. Scaling-Up Human Henge: Using Prehistoric Cultural Heritage Sites to Enhance Mental Health Well-Being in Marginalized Communities

Scaling-Up Human Henge: Using Prehistoric Cultural Heritage Sites to Enhance Mental Health Well-Being in Marginalized Communities

Using cultural heritage assets as the basis for enhancing health and well-being is well established in Britain. Although health benefits are clear, many programmes have been small-scale, poorly evaluated, and costly to run. Using a network of academic and third-sector partners, Scaling-up Human Henge will co-produce a place-based Culture Heritage Therapy Programme (CHTP) that will be evaluated and documented so that it can be rolled-out nationally. The focus is on prevention and intervention through social prescribing to enhance the well-being of people living with long-term common mental health disorders (CMHDs). Heritage assets in the form of prehistoric ritual landscapes, such as the henge monument at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, will be used because similar places are widely scattered across Britain, are easily accessible and safe, and provide ideal venues for structured performative engagements with cultural heritage.

Scaling-up Human Henge involves building strong partnerships and collaborations with third sector charities and secondary health services including: Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust; English Heritage; Rethink (Wiltshire Mental Health Inclusion Service); and the Restoration Trust. It builds upon a previous project ‘Human Henge’ led by the Restoration Trust.

AHRC

Publications

Historic landscapes and mental well-being. 2019. Edited by: Timothy Darvill, Kerry Barrass, Laura Drysdale, Vanessa Heaslip, and Yvette Staelens. Oxford. Archaeopress. Paperback; xx+282 pages; 70 figures, 7 tables (75 pages in colour). Available both in print and Open Access. Printed ISBN 9781789692686. Epublication ISBN 9781789692693. https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781789692686

Locating oneself in the past to influence the present: Impacts of Neolithic landscapes on mental health well-being. Health and Place. Heaslip, V., Vahdaninia, M., Hind, M., Darvill, T., Staelens, Y., O’Donoghue, D., Drysdale, L., Lunt, S., Hogg, C., Allfrey, M., Clifton, B., Sutcliffe, T., 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.10227

Team

Professor Tim Darvill (Co-Director), Bournemouth University

Professor Vanessa Heaslip (Co-Director), University of Salford

Dr Annie Hawton, University of Exeter

Dr Elizabeth Goodwin, University of Exeter

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