Wales for Africa: Art, but not just for art’s sake

The Wales for Africa Health Links Annual Conference took place in July.  It was a great success with over 100 delegates and everyone was delighted that the Health Minister Mark Drakeford was able to make the keynote address.  Other speakers included The CNO Jean White, Professor Sir Andy Haines from LSHTM and Professor Sir Eldryd Parry from THET.

Mothers of Africa were delighted to be asked to lead an arts project seminar.  The charity has an arts and empowerment project for the women (also men!) and children of Shiyala Village Chongwe, Zambia.  Between them, Mothers of Africa’s Sue Hunt (Cardiff Metropolitan University CSAD) and Paul Crompton (Cardiff University) engineered a photoshoot with delegates own important Health Messages, including Mark Drakeford.  It’s a lovely piece, art with a message.   The format we used to make the Health messages, was originally used by artist Gillian Wearing in her ‘Signs’ project in 1992.

The really exciting thing is, we’re going to do exactly the same thing in Shiyala Village in September coming up. Comparing messages between countries should be really interesting.  Let’s see if I can’t get the Minister of Health in Zambia to do one!

The Annual Report was released  at the Conference with the following highlights:

• Over 280 volunteers in Wales and over 1200 volunteers in Africa are involved with health links.
• There are projects being delivered across 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
• These projects benefit over 2000 people directly and nearly 3 million indirectly.