Selling Healing: Creative Arts and Health Communication in Ghana

By: Ama de-Graft Aikins

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Synopsis: The intersections between arts, creativity and health are of significant importance in the humanities and social sciences. Arts and health research, for example, suggests that the arts offer participatory and transformational alternatives to traditional health communication. However, concepts and methods are predominantly informed by Global North research, and critical insights from arts traditions elsewhere remain to be fully integrated into common models. Ghana offers a unique case study for examining local and global dynamics in arts-based health communication, because of the country's rich art traditions as well as its place in global history and in the global imagination. Healing art forms like music and sculpture have evolved through intentional cross-cultural borrowings, as well as through changes imposed through slavery, colonialism and post-colonial political systems. Selling Healing tells a polyvocal story of how Ghanaian art forms intersect with health, illness and healing, inviting a re-imagining of health communication in global health.