CARE campaign illustration of a person riding a musical note on a green background

CARE for mental health? Arts and culture!

Client:
CARE

Sector:
Culture, NGO

CARE is an EU-funded initiative exploring a powerful idea: arts and culture are not extras. They are infrastructure for mental health. The project brings together cultural organisations across six countries to document what culture can actually do, when taken seriously. They came to Glitch to turn academic evidence into something people feel. Not a public health announcement. Not institutional grey. Something warm enough, and visually sharp enough, to stop a scroll.

CARE arts culture mental health - EU-funded initiative outdoor campaign poster showing arts and wellbeing connection

CARE: Campaign Concept

A population study of recreational arts engagement found that people who spent around two or more hours a week on the arts reported better mental wellbeing. It found an association, not proof that art alone caused the difference. Our challenge was to give that research a place in everyday life.

So we built the campaign around one move: make art feel as big as it actually is.

More arts, more wellbeing takes five cultural activities (music, visual arts, dance, museums, and creative expression) and turns each into an entire world. Art is not decoration at the margins of your life. It is a place you can enter.

Headlines written to stick, with the research close at hand. The CARE campaign page brings together the messages, scientific references and a toolkit for sharing them.

CARE: Visual System

We developed a hand-drawn visual language: loose, textured ink lines on bold, saturated colour fields. Each theme carries its own palette. Yellow for museums. Green for music. Pink for visual arts. Blue for dance. Warm red for belonging. A small white figure moves through every world: climbing a musical score, surfing a brushstroke, falling into a canvas.

Genderless, ageless, always in motion. Not a mascot. A mirror. Someone small enough to remind you that art is bigger than you.

The system was built to travel across formats and languages through a toolkit that let partner organisations across Europe run the campaign while keeping the identity intact.

CARE: Distribution

The campaign ran across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn through CultureForHealth and Culture Action Europe, on a three-week rhythm of three posts per week, each dedicated to a different art form. Enough presence to build recognition. Not so much that it disappears.

Stories opened conversations: polls, questions, invitations to share how people already use culture to cope. Paid media concentrated on CultureForHealth to maximise reach, with Culture Action Europe’s channels handling organic amplification.

Every carousel closed the same way: Make arts and culture a weekly habit. Two or more hours of arts a week has been linked to better mental wellbeing. More arts, more wellbeing.

About CARE and glitch

CARE is an EU-funded initiative built on one idea: arts and culture are not extras — they are essential infrastructure for mental wellbeing.

The CARE project is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and led by the Cluj Cultural Centre, with partners including Culture Action Europe, the European Festivals Association, Društvo Asociacija, the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture, Arts for Health Austria, and Bozar Brussels. The awareness campaign was developed by Glitch Studio. For more, visit our portfolio or the Glitch Library.

Credits

Creative direction
Dan Stănescu

Project management
Domnica Stuparu

Graphic Design & Art Direction
Maria Popescu

Illustrations
Maria Popescu

Animations
Studio VÂNĂ

Next projects

Next project

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

Analytics Cookies

With your permission, this website uses Google Analytics 4 to measure visits, page views and interactions. Analytics remains disabled until you enable this category. Google Signals and advertising personalisation are disabled.