Arab News | Jameel Arts & Health Lab highlights healing power of arts at UN General Assembly in NYC

JEDDAH: During last month’s UN General Assembly in New York, the Jameel Arts & Health Lab — in collaboration with the World Health Organization, once again hosted its Healing Arts Week, which featured more than 50 events across the city’s five boroughs.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the UN mandate on Children and Armed Conflict, Community Jameel, War Child Alliance, and the WHO co-hosted a reception at Carnegie Hall following one of the latter’s series of Well-Being Concerts — a performance by US-born singer-songwriter Somi, who is of Rwandan and Ugandan descent, and whose “introspective, soothing artistry embodies the spirit of this series, inviting audiences to be fully present and immersed in the experience,” Carnegie Hall’s chief education officer Sarah Johnson told Arab News.

“We specifically invited UN delegates and NGO leaders working on the frontlines of armed conflicts affecting children,” Stephen Stapleton, founding co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, said of the concert. “We hoped Somi’s music would give them strength and inspiration, ease some of the stress and anxiety they carry, and show them that the arts can be a genuine resource in their work.”

In a written statement to Arab News, George Richards, director of Community Jameel, said: “Last year, the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict registered a record number of grave violations against children by parties to armed conflict — from killing, maiming, and rape, to recruitment, abduction, and attacks on schools and hospitals. To address this rampant misery, and with global humanitarian funding reduced, Community Jameel is committed to finding effective, innovative ways to help these desperate children — from the Jameel Arts & Health Lab rolling out evidence-informed arts-and-health interventions for supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing in emergencies, to the HEAL2PLAY initiative, deploying advanced surgical techniques, wound management, prosthetics technology and rehabilitative care to more than 1,000 children living with limb loss and severe extremity injuries in Gaza.”

At the reception, according to a statement from Jameel Arts & Health Lab, Richards, Sheema Gupta — director of child protection at UNICEF, and Mark Jordans — director of R&D at War Child Alliance, “all reinforced the crucial role that culture can play in supporting health and wellbeing during and post-conflict.”