Culture, Conflict & Mental Health

Biography:

Ian Thomas is the Head of Arts Research and Insights at the British Council, leading the global arts evidence, insights, and learning work. He has contributed to the understanding of culture in crisis contexts and cultural protection programmes supporting cultural practitioners and heritage in conflict-affected contexts. His knowledge bridges cultural diplomacy, emergency response and long-term cultural development, with particular focus on how culture contributes to community resilience and mental wellbeing in humanitarian settings. Through the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund and related initiatives, Ian helps develop institutional frameworks that recognise culture as essential to humanitarian response rather than secondary concern.

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Biography:

Lora Ksieniewicz is a US-based cultural practitioner working in humanitarian contexts and creating innovative approaches to mental health support in conflict zones. She is developing an online wellness programme in Myanmar that generates funding for cultural and yoga practices in crisis-affected communities, especially for youth, bridging the gap between resource availability in stable contexts and urgent needs in conflict zones. Her work demonstrates how digital platforms can create sustainable funding models for community-led healing practices, ensuring cultural practitioners can continue essential mental health support even in resource-scarce environments.

Yoga SanKalpa

Xhesjana Haxhiu: This is a 2-part podcast jointly produced by culture360.ASEF.org, the arts and culture portal of the Asia-Europe Foundation, and by culture Solutions, an association committed to advancing the understanding of international cultural relations. This podcast is part of ASEF culture360’s “Redefining ‘Well-being’ through Culture” open call, which explores the multidimensional contributions of culture to physical and mental health, as well as to individual and societal well-being.

My name is Xhesjana Haxhiu, I am a Research Collaborator for culture Solutions and I’m delighted to host this podcast series titled “Culture, Conflict and Mental Health: the Myanmar case”. Let’s begin.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Hello and welcome. Today’s conversation asks, when communities face conflict and crisis, how does culture become a lifeline for mental health?

Myanmar offers an urgent case study. Following the 2021 military coup, the country has experienced a mental health crisis and a near complete collapse of healthcare infrastructure. Also, mental health policy remains governed by the Lunacy Act from 1912. In this context, communities have turned to culture, music, arts and rituals not as supplement to healthcare, but as primary response to collective trauma.

To understand this better, we have three remarkable practitioners here with us.

Maw Hpray Myar, also called Nene, is a young Karenni violinist who volunteered at a hospital in Myanmar’s jungle until it was bombed in 2023, and now brings music to communities through her school.

Lora Ksieniewicz, a US-based humanitarian developing ties with Maw to bridge resources in stable contexts with urgent needs in conflict zones. And Ian Thomas, Head of Arts Research and Insights at the British Council, whose work bridges cultural diplomacy, emergency response and cultural protection globally.

Three different approaches to the same urgent question: How does culture help communities survive, cope and heal?

Maw, Lora, Ian – welcome and thank you for being here with us today.

Maw Hpray Myar: Hi.

Lora Ksieniewicz: Thank you for having us.

Ian Thomas: Yeah. Thank you for having us. Looking forward to it

Xhesjana Haxhiu: So Maw, your journey from volunteering in a hospital to founding a music school after that hospital was bombed is really, really incredible. What made you turn to music as a form of resistance and healing?

Maw Hpray Myar: For me, music is not just something to enjoy, but it is a way to inspire myself and to really listen to others. When there’s no one here to hear you, it is to feel lost. In those moments, we need something that makes us feel a bit more comfortable. Whenever I feel like I have no one to lean on, I turn to music, composing sound, playing instruments or just listening to it gives me courage. 

I used to work in a hospital and with NGO and local armed groups. After the bombing, I ended up in an IDP [internally displaced person] camp and that’s when I met so many young people who had lost hope. I worked in a war zone and ran away myself. I’m also a survivor of human trafficking. I know very well what it feels like to have no hope.

Seeing them reminded me of my younger self. Music is more than my escape. It is how I heal my heart. Eventually, I started reaching out to them through music. We sang together, we talked and sometimes we even cried together. Those moments showed me how music is able to really touch our emotions and help us connect with each other.

When I decided to help them do music, I wanted to focus on young people around 15 to 18. They are at such an important age, and I wanted to give them a space to feel heard, supported and hopeful. When I tried to use music, culture and tradition to support young people, I got much criticism. In my community, people don’t really focus on our mental wellbeing. I believe we should not forget our mental and emotional health and also our culture.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much. That was such an inspiring story and I am so glad that you chose to share it with us. Ian, let’s shift to the institutional perspective. So the British Council Cultural Protection Fund and Culture in Crisis work operates at an institutional level, working with governments, international frameworks and formal programmes. My question to you is how does an institution like the British Council think about culture and mental health in conflict zones and, consequently, how can that positively influence Asian-European cultural relations?

Ian Thomas: Many thanks for the question, Jess. So just a little bit as an opening, just a little bit about the Cultural Protection Fund. The Cultural Protection Fund is run by the British Council. It runs across 18 different countries in places such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and it funds projects, both tangible and intangible heritage, to protect them from conflict, from war, from the impact of climate change or both. And it’s been running now for 10 years since 2016.

So it looks at culture and heritage as a protective factor. It’s a stabilising force in a crisis such as climate or conflict. It helps cultural identity by providing continuality, when everything else collapses around it locally. It allows for community-led cultural activity, it supports belonging, agency and meaning. It supports cultural participation in local communities, reducing isolation, strengthening social bonds, supporting recovery during conflict, building resilience, community resilience, community cohesion, social cohesion.

And it also, cultural protection as trauma-informed practice, so “do no harm”, is embedded across all our development work, building local agency, local voice, people-centred approaches to local communities, supporting local communities to tell their own stories through heritage, through tangible and intangible heritage. And through that, heritage and culture as a bridge in international cultural relations, so that cultural relations approach, that mutuality, co-creation, long-term approach that the British Council takes across all its work, across education, arts, and its English work, that mutuality at the heart, that people-centred, locally-led approach to its work. So how does that translate to practitioners on the ground? How we can support more trauma-aware approaches, how we build that “do no harm” approach in our work?

How we build peer support networks, peer learning networks, creating those safe spaces to share values and conversations in local communities in quite fragile contexts. How we connect not just projects, but peer networks, learning partnerships, learning networks, those co-created peer support networks locally and how we connect them through a cultural relations approach to the global. How do we build evaluation approaches that capture the voice of local communities, local voice and those practitioners, and also how we put practitioners’ wellbeing and resilience at the heart of our cultural relations approach.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much, Ian. That is really important and relevant for the conversation.

So what we’re hearing right now is about grassroots necessity on one side, institutional frameworks on the other. Lora, your work seems to bridge these two worlds in a really creative way. Could you describe to us how you conceptualised this need to fill that space and how it made sense to you to interact with artists in these conflict zones?

Lora Ksieniewicz: I come from a space where we teach wellness and tools for managing our nervous systems and managing trauma through yoga and Buddhist meditation. It’s really important to us that we kind of put the rubber to the road, that we practice in the larger world and how we’re moving through the world together, all of these principles that are also beneficial and calming on a personal level.

The practices of yoga and Buddhism were not meant to be something that we just use for ourselves and then sort of end of sentence, right? We’re meant to lean into the principles of interdependence and the fact that we’re all living in a world together where our actions impact one another on the local level and on a global level.

I am in the private sector with that, of course, but we bring in this role of social responsibility and how we’re going to carry that forward. I’ve been looking over the years — I started out as a conflict photojournalist trying to bring awareness to difficult situations around the world.

A lot of when we look at, like, how are we going to continue to fund projects in the humanitarian sector? A lot of the thought is, well, we have to look more to the private sector to get involved. We’re getting less and less government funding. We’re getting less and less sort of big organisational funding. And so we look to the private sector for that.

I have created a wellness programme that is adjacent to Nene’s work with the music and gives folks that are already getting these nervous system benefits from the art, from the music, from this collaboration and then gives them even more grounding and practical tools to manage through breathwork, through visualisation, meditation, and through some basic mindfulness tools.

And so the way that I’ve created this programme and to sort of be this bridge between the two sectors is that the wellness programme and benefits for the beneficiaries are free to access and they’re tools that we’re rolling out in, say, IDP [internally displaced person] camps or in refugee communities or places where people have experienced the conflict.

And then there’s another side to the programme that is facing the benefactors. We all deal with a stressful and chaotic and unpredictable world. Of course, we do not experience this world in the same way, and we do not have the same level of trauma from how we live. But we all struggle, we all suffer. That’s another one of those foundational principles of Buddhist meditation and yoga is really recognising the universality of our experience.

It also, it’s not just a sort of ideological bridge. That’s my main thought. It’s that I want to lessen the divide between benefactor and beneficiary. And also just really recognise that this is a shared experience, that our humanity is a shared experience, that dealing with life and its challenges is a shared experience. And so it’s a financial bridge, but it’s also a sort of compassionate and ideological bridge between what can seem like folks living in completely different experiences in completely different worlds.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much Lora. That is really fascinating how you’re trying to not be just ideological in this bridge, but you’re actually trying to do something concrete to help communities in conflict zones.

So far we’re seeing these three distinct approaches that address different parts of the same challenge. Now I would like to bring all of you into conversation. So each of you represents a different piece of the puzzle. Grassroots practice, institutional support and this sustainable funding in the in-between space.

What do you think, what can your approach learn from the others? Maw, what do you think — what would institutional support or different models of funding make possible for your work?

Maw Hpray Myar: If we get more support, we can do more, I think. Without help and support, it’s difficult for us to continue. We could have those young people better help with the help from different institutions. In fact, we need all the help we could get. We are doing this not because we have all the resources, but because we believe we need to do something for those young people. So we need all the support and the platforms and networks to raise awareness of our cause.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you Nene. Ian, what does the British Council learn from grassroots practitioners and how is that knowledge then reinjected into research and policy work?

Ian Thomas: So just to give one example. About two years ago, we created a cultural heritage protection peer learning network, which operated across 13 countries across the Middle East and Africa, and was made up of practitioners, heritage protection practitioners who were running projects on the ground across Africa and the Middle East.

The peer learning network brought them together online over 18 months to kind of share reflections, to share key challenges and opportunities that they had identified themselves. It wasn’t that the British Council had identified these issues. These were bottom-up from the projects themselves saying these are the things we want to talk about from our communities, from our projects. And we want to talk to these other countries and these other projects about this to find common solutions, common ways forward through this.

So learning and insight is a growing area. They feed into our programme design, our projects design and our funding design, and also how we share learning and insight internally across the British Council, but also sharing what we know externally as well. We have an external podcast series of our own, for example, “Our World Connected”, that’s on our website. We publish insight and research and evaluation on our website. We’re also trying to get out there to help inform through side events, through policy engagement, but also with practitioners, you know, sharing our knowledge, sharing our insight in this space. It is a growing area for us.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: That is really great to hear that the British Council has put in place projects and it is working in peer learning networks, and creating websites and resources for people in conflict areas through cultural heritage. Lora, what does this tell you about, you know, the need and capacity to truly connect to one another?

Lora Ksieniewicz: I mean, I think what we can see here is just how multifaceted the approach needs to be to serve those in need. All of the institutional support is so critical to being able to garner further funding and support for the projects that we’re doing. And of course, when we’re talking about having tools that can be beneficial multiculturally, there’s going to be different challenges in different communities.

Sometimes there’s a stigma against mental health or mental wellness tools. Sometimes there’s an idea that it means that there’s a flaw in the individual. So it’s important to approach all of these with a level of sensitivity when we talk to folks that are actually going to be using these tools. For example, speaking to Nene and speaking to folks that are in impacted communities, you know, this level of really listening into how we might need to adapt and adjust our approach is so important.

It’s one of the UN principles of participation and inclusion, really making sure that we’re not just sort of creating a programme and handing it over, but we’re really talking to those that would be using the programme and leveraging the programme. And then also having, of course, the research and the institutional support is bolstering as well. So I think even just in this conversation, we can see examples of the interconnectedness and the dependency on one another to really make lasting change and impact.

Xhesjana Haxhiu:  Yes, exactly. Exactly. That’s what I was thinking. Like these three approaches, they’re not isolated. They can actually strengthen each other and work together.

Now let’s bring this to our listeners with a final question for this episode. What is one concrete thing you want them to know or do to support culture-based mental health work in conflict zones?

Ian Thomas: It will be about sharing learning and insight more in this space. There is a vast amount of knowledge and insight siloed away, fragmented away, and how we can bring all that together, knit all that together, all that knowledge, insight and learning to help support practitioners in this space. So I think there’s something there about bringing together the combined knowledge and insight to help inform practice but also to help inform funders and policymakers in this space. At the moment, it’s quite fragmented, the evidence base and the learning.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you, perfect. Yes, practice on the ground, definitely needed in the field. Lora?

Lora Ksieniewicz: I think there’s two things I would want folks to really appreciate and one is that every impact matters. So we think, “oh I can’t make a big donation” or “I don’t have a lot of time to offer”. There’s always a way to make an impact. And if everyone can contribute some level of effort, whether it’s—sometimes it’s as simple as sharing a post or amplifying a voice of someone that needs their story told. Sometimes it’s taking a stand against someone saying something in public that is offensive or hate speech, right? All of these things really are so important in the world today. And as we start to want to make it more of a place that aligns values of being connected and driving forth good change.

And then the other piece that I think is really important is that sometimes wellness and the arts can be thought of as not-necessities. When we think of folks that have been in conflict, or we think of folks that have been in crisis, we think, okay, well, they need shelter and they need food. And that’s often true. And yet, the UN at one point had done the big grand survey of beneficiaries of different efforts. And one of the top results that people wanted was education. And everyone was very surprised that people wanted education. But what folks that had been through a tremendous amount of conflict and trauma wanted was hope. They wanted hope for their children to live a better life than they had experienced. They wanted the knowledge that there was this future.

And so I think when we look at arts and we look at wellness and we look at these tools, like these are tools that help folks have hope, and to see that there’s a future and that there is this sort of resonance still in life, even when it’s been incredibly difficult. It’s not an add-on to have music, to have passion, to have the ability to sort of sleep through the night, no matter what you may have experienced prior, and to give folks tools that can help them better accomplish these things. These things that I think we all recognise make life worth living, right? Showing up and hearing this beautiful piece of music, listening to Nene play the violin, for example.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you, Lora. I totally agree that communities have started to take on culture not anymore as a supplement, but more as a primary response and a primary resource for their trauma and for what they’re going through.

Nene, would you like to say something about this? What is one thing that grassroots practitioners want people to know, or like how can they support culture-based mental health?

Maw Hpray Myar: I want those people to know that my people can heal their mental health through the wisdom in their culture and traditions. But when others don’t understand it, they may criticise and say this way doesn’t work. Because of that, people can start to lose trust in their own traditions. That’s why it is important to encourage art. At the very least, they really need to listen to us. So please listen to us.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: That’s a great message. Listen to the communities that are asking for help.

Thank you to Maw Hpray Myar, Ian Thomas and Lora Ksieniewicz for this essential conversation.

As we close this conversation, three insights stand out. First, none of this work happens without the kind of passion, commitment and energy that Maw brings to her communities. Staying present, listening and building trust over time, transcending personal traumas into resistance.

Second, as Ian emphasised, we must approach this work with a do-no-harm mindset, creating trauma-informed practice and safe spaces where culture becomes a resource for healing, not an imposition. And finally, Lora reminded us that the connections we’re building aren’t just financial, they’re practical, philosophical and deeply human, recognising that we all share the struggle of living in a chaotic world and we all need these tools.

In Episode 2 we’ll look forward. What’s changing in this field? How do we move from individual projects to systemic change?

Thank you to our partners culture Solutions and ASEF Culture360 for making this dialogue possible. The podcast is published on culture360.asef.org and culturesolutions.eu and is available on Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.

Please follow, like and share this episode and stay tuned for Episode 2, where we explore what the future holds for culture-based mental health work in conflict zones and Asia-Europe relations.

Thank you for listening and see you next time.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: This is a 2-part podcast jointly produced by culture360.ASEF.org, the arts and culture portal of the Asia-Europe Foundation, and by culture Solutions, an association committed to advancing the understanding of international cultural relations. This podcast is part of ASEF culture360’s “Redefining ‘Well-being’ through Culture” open call, which explores the multidimensional contributions of culture to physical and mental health, as well as to individual and societal well-being.

My name is Xhesjana Haxhiu, I am a Research Collaborator for culture Solutions and I’m delighted to host this podcast series titled “Culture, Conflict and Mental Health: the Myanmar case”. Let’s begin.

Hello and welcome back! In Episode 1 we explored how culture supports mental health in crisis contexts through three different approaches.

Maw Hpray Myar or Nene‘s grassroots work bringing music to communities in Myanmar’s conflict zones. Ian Thomas’ institutional perspective from the British Council’s cultural protection programmes and Lora Ksieniewicz’s innovative ways to connect resources to practitioners on the ground.

Today, in Episode 2, we look forward. What’s changing in this field? What’s needed next? How do we move from individual projects to systemic change? 

Together we’ll explore the evolution of this work, the next generation of practitioners and the visions for integrating culture into humanitarian mental health responses globally. 

Maw, Ian and Lora, thank you for returning to our podcast. Let’s continue the conversation.

Maw, my first question is for you. As we talked about in our previous episode, you have made a big, profound journey from armed resistance to culture resistance and recently completed a module in mental health and wellbeing. And now you’re teaching this to the next generation in Myanmar. When you teach young activists about using culture as resistance, what do you want them to understand?

Maw Hpray Myar: I want those young people to understand that music is not only something to enjoy but also a way to express resistance. I want them to experience it and share it with others. For me, resistance means knowing our rights and speaking up, even when our tradition and culture are being threatened. 

The military wants to narrow our minds through fear and war, to make us surrender by making us unhappy. When the military tries to break our spirit, I believe that choosing to stay joyful is also a form of resistance. Through music and tradition, I want to bring back happiness to my people and I believe my people have the ability to create that state of mind for themselves. 

They just need some help as they already have good resilience in them. This is one kind of resistance I have learned in this revolution.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much, Maw. This evolution from one form of resistance to another, and now you’re passing this knowledge forward, is really needed and powerful. And I really like staying joyful as a form of resistance and bringing happiness to your people as your objective with your school and with your work.

Ian, I want to ask you about a shift happening in the field of culture protection itself. So culture protection in conflict zones traditionally focuses on tangible heritage, so monuments, buildings, and sites. But when it comes to mental health in conflict zones, it seems that the intangible is what matters. How is the field evolving to recognise that protecting cultural practices is essential? And are we moving toward a systemic integration of culture into humanitarian mental health responses?

Ian Thomas: Great question. So we are seeing a growing area in the field of intangible heritage, or as UNESCO calls it, living heritage. So heritage protection and institutions now recognising rituals, songs, crafts, oral histories that help communities process trauma. How cultural practices provide structure when life becomes challenging or fragile, or how shared cultural heritage activity rebuilds trust in very fractured and fragile communities due to conflict or war or other issues like climate. 

How safeguarding intangible heritage provides that kind of social support, that resilience support, cohesion support for local communities and people. So you’re starting to see why UNESCO’s 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage has become increasingly relevant as a crisis response, as a resilience response, as a cohesion response. 

So across the sector now, you’re starting to see trauma-informed documentation of intangible heritage, you’re starting to see community-led safeguarding plans being put into place, integration of cultural community and cultural continuity into humanitarian protection frameworks. Heritage workers have been trained in mental health first aid principles, for example. And also you’re starting to see how evaluation systems are tracking resilience and wellbeing outcomes through heritage programmes and heritage protection programmes. 

So for example, we’ve got a Cultural Protection Fund project in Pakistan, for example, that looks at craft heritage and women’s economic resilience. So how it supported women in kind of a fragile context, strengthened community cohesion, supported women’s agency and livelihoods, alongside preserving intangible craft knowledge and preservation. So we’re seeing cultural practice itself become a coping mechanism as a source of agency, of resilience, of wellbeing, of mental health, for example.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much Ian. I’m really glad to hear that we are moving towards this evolution of the field in understanding and documenting and evaluating how living heritage, as you said, can work as a coping mechanism and is embedded into the new policies and the UNESCO convention.

Lora, you have worked extensively in humanitarian contexts and we see that both human-caused and natural disasters continue relentlessly. In this case we have the Myanmar case that is still happening since 2021. So when linking culture and mental health in crisis zones, how do you keep the human dimension central when the scale of needs feels so overwhelming, right?

Lora Ksieniewicz: As I believe we talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but it can be really easy to just start to focus on the immediate and most visible needs and getting things like food and shelter delivered. The human element is in the very root word of humanitarian effort for a reason.

And when you get at the definition of what humanitarian aid is, one of the key principles is that it’s not just getting folks to survive, but to be able to live with dignity, right? That’s the word that we keep coming back to in the humanitarian sector is to live a life with dignity.

Of course, there’s surviving the initial conflict and then there’s the aftermath of having to deal with that trauma. And we know that the impact that that can have on an individual’s mental health and their will to survive, their will to continue to live. It can certainly exacerbate family dynamics, can exacerbate domestic violence, it can exacerbate all of these sorts of secondary traumas that can happen after an already chaotic and traumatic event.

And so I think being able to address the needs of mental health and wellness and also be able to take that out into family dynamics and community dynamics is another aspect of survival and it may not be the sort of thing where, you know, in a refugee camp or an IDP camp that’s been established for some time, if we look at some of the communities that we were in in Jordan where folks have been living in some of these camps for decades now. 

The way that the wellness programmes can be implemented and run in something like that is quite different than how it needs to be done in an immediate crisis situation. But in an immediate crisis situation, even after, say, a flood or a storm or a conflict, it’s when responding, not reacting, is even more critical, making sure that we’re not making those hasty errors right away out of a reactionary response that can have a worse impact later on down the road. We need to be clear-eyed, clear-headed, clear-hearted. And so these tools are essential right from the beginning.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Yes, Lora, thank you very much. The points you touched on, on these visible needs of living with dignity and on how hard it can be to help communities that are in an active conflict zone and not after the conflict is really important. And I know you’re working with Maw trying to help communities in Myanmar and we look forward to seeing the fruits, the results of these collaborations.

I would like now to push all three of you to try to envision the future together. Looking, let’s say five years ahead from now, what needs to change for culture-based mental health work in conflict zones to move from the margins to the mainstream? For instance, Ian, what policy or institutional shifts are necessary?

Ian Thomas: So the shift is to be evidence-led, evidence-informed in this space, moving from time-bound projects to kind of ecosystems of practice. So using evidence instead of having short-term projects, which are limited in time, limited in impact, limited in funding, how we can shift the policy landscape to think of ecosystems of practice, linking cultural actors, mental health actors, organisations, practitioners, and policymakers. 

So you’re bringing everyone together into an ecosystem that is informed by evidence, learning, and insight. So you’re linking everyone together, you’re breaking down silos in this space, and you’re getting over these kinds of short term, limited impact interventions or projects that may be a couple of weeks or a couple of days, but you’re moving into a systems approach. And within that, then you have space for learning across practitioners, policymakers, mental health sectors, you’re bringing the sectors together, practitioners from mental health and the cultural sector and the heritage sector together, policymakers, and also funding as well. And also you’re doing that you’re putting learning at the heart of that as well. 

So I think that moving away from short-term interventions to long-term, evidence-informed, learning at the heart, bringing sectors together type approach would be a game changer in this space.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Yes, absolutely. No short-term projects seems the right move in these situations and not having projects anymore, but having an actual system that works for the communities is what is definitely needed in the shift.

Maw, what do you think? What needs to change for grassroots practitioners? And talking from your work in Myanmar, what needs to be resourced and recognised?

Maw Hpray Myar: I think people need to better understand that the work we do is based on our traditions. They also need to know how we work and the results we are achieving. For that, I think it is important for us to have as many platforms and networks as possible to share our experience, challenges, and our success stories and pitfalls. I believe it is very important to listen to what we are doing and to recognise our work because our methods are based on our traditions and it can be hard for outsiders to understand. That’s why people really need to listen to us carefully. When you listen, you not only understand better, but also start to see our potential and know better how to support it and what we truly need. And we need to raise our voice and make people understand better about our work.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Yes, we can see that learning and understanding is at the heart of culture-based mental health work. Thank you, Maw. Lora, based on your Myanmar collaboration, what infrastructure or support system would make this partnership more sustainable?

Lora Ksieniewicz: I think leaning into what Nene was just saying, really amplifying the feedback from her community and the work that she’s doing and being able to listen to their experience and the impact of the music programme and the arts programme and the wellness programme. 

I think that helps alone make it more sustainable as we understand the benefits of it. I love what Ian said about creating this ecosystem as well. And I think there’s a missing piece that all of these humanitarian efforts need to be incorporating these tools into their training programmes for the humanitarian aid workers as well, right? That’s the sort of piece in the middle. And the more that we can recognise that those addressing trauma, those experiencing the trauma, and those trying to be benefactors to help those who have experienced the trauma, all of us are dealing with the challenges of life and living in a chaotic world. And so we all need these tools and it needs to be more of an integrated ecosystem all around. And then certainly, again, listening to those beneficiaries to understand the impact is part of what’s gonna naturally make it more sustainable and rolled out at a larger scale.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much, Lora, for this very insightful answer on how sustainability can be seen not only as a monetary but also as a people-to-people partnership. That is really important to point that out. 

For our final question, I wanted to ask you about the next generation of practitioners, policymakers, researchers, or funders entering this field. What is something that they need to unlearn, that they need to change and they need to prioritise maybe something else when thinking about culture and wellbeing?

Lora Ksieniewicz: I think the low hanging fruit is that we need policies that are human focused versus profit and corporate focused. And now so much of how we approach policies is not identified with this sort of human benefit. And so I think at the grassroots level, we just need more leaders who are looking at the policies that they’re making and implementing and the way they’re governing through the lens of humanitarian aid and humanitarian support and humanitarian principles. That’s my ideal.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: What do you think, Ian?

Ian Thomas: I would echo some of that. I would put people-centred approaches at the heart, locally-led approaches at the heart, recognise intangible heritage as a core resilience asset for policymakers and funders, community-led decision-making as default, trauma-informed practice as a baseline skill in this space, and a real focus, we’re getting to see some of this recently, wellbeing of cultural practitioners as a duty of care.

And that switch from short-term to long-term. And I think that that’s one of the key mindsets that needs to happen is from short-term impact, short-term funding and a shift to that kind of systems long-term, because this does take time. And it’s a slow impact that we’re after here. And it’s not a quick, easy fix. So that switch to long-term ecosystem thinking.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: How do you see this happening in Asia-European contexts, in this partnership between Asia and Europe?

Ian Thomas: I think there is something about this cultural relations approach which speaks to this kind of partnership between Europe and Asia at the moment. That kind of long-term, co-created, mutual, trust-based approach that can work in those kinds of fragile contexts. 

So it’s really looking at that kind of wellbeing, that resilience, that cohesion during and post-conflict settings, for example, taking that cultural relations approach, really shifting culture and heritage up the policy agenda, that it’s not an add-on, it’s an essential part of that fragile context toolkit, that it can play a role within that fragile context and you can have to invest in evidence generation to back that up for policymakers as well and funders. And really look at that mental health dimension really being explicit in those kinds of peace or conflict or fragility programmes as well that it’s often forgotten about.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much Ian. Yes, culture and heritage should be part of the toolkit when dealing with culture-based mental health work.

What policy or institutional shifts are necessary? How can the UK and the EU in the framework of Asia-Europe relations push for a common vision of cultural relations?

Ian Thomas: It’s not a quick fix. This current UK government, for example, has been resetting its relationship with the EU and the EU Commission, coming back into the EU Horizon programme, into the EU Erasmus programme, for example. So, there was a clear— and defence and security is one of the key things that the UK and the EU are getting closer together on, so to speak, and that fragile context work, for example. 

I think the EU and the UK are mostly aligned on this. The ASEAN region, for example, is a key geographical area for the UK at the moment, like it is for the EU. So yes, there are similar priorities, similar thinking. You’re seeing this also with the EU Cultural Compass as well.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: And I have a follow up question to Lora and Ian. Based on the extremely tense and volatile situations for minorities and democratic activists in Myanmar, where is the potential for culture practitioners to raise awareness and make sure these crises don’t get forgotten?

Lora Ksieniewicz: So I think we have to look at each situation uniquely. There are often conflict zones that are in an acute crisis or an acute situation where we have to use a level of discretion and safety. So yes, we want to raise awareness. We want folks’ voices to be heard. We also have to be strategic and careful and make sure that we’re not exposing communities to more potential harm.

And so I think that that really does bring the onus back on folks like myself or like Ian who are not in the conflict zones directly to be able to make our voices more heard from our positions of relative safety and security.

And so it can be, it can be challenging to amplify all the voices that need it. But I do think, being able to connect these personal stories as Nene said so importantly during our conversations here that, you know, communities also want to know that they’re being heard. Her community wants to know that they’re being heard and that their stories are being known and that they’re being advocated for.

There’s a little bit of the medicine in just the connection of talking and saying “we want to help you, we want to see what we can do, we want to share your stories”, right? That’s not enough. We need policy to back it. We need change to back it. We need funding to support it. But that human connection is just so critical to our overall wellbeing that even just giving folks a platform and a voice to be heard and making sure that their stories are shared is a little dose of that medicine that’s needed in the first place.

Ian Thomas: I would just echo that and build on that slightly. So the British Council is 90 years old as an organisation and we’ve been in some countries for 90 odd years and it’s been about that connection and that relationship over the long term, through a variety of different contexts, through a variety of different settings. Through that cultural relations approach you make a long term commitment to being present on the ground.

Being present, being connected through a variety of different situations, through a variety of different contexts, whether it be war, fragility, the good times as well, it is having that connection, that long-term connection that allows you then to tell those stories, to connect the local to the global.

So to have that kind of presence on the ground is incredibly important in that cultural relations approach.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Maw, what do you think? Do you agree? Do you have any comments on what Ian has just said? And coming back to our last question, what do you think grassroots practitioners need to unlearn and what do they need to prioritise?

Maw Hpray Myar: One thing I want people to understand is that we are doing this work through experiential learning on the ground. So sometimes it may not match what funders are looking for. Because of that, there are times when we don’t reach the support. Sometimes we also don’t know what we need to do to get that support. 

I would like people to focus more on the work we are doing and the impact we are creating. To say this clearly, they need to engage more with people on the ground. And also, I think, platforms like this podcast are very helpful. They give us the chance to share our story more clearly. I believe people can understand us better this way. I thank you for this opportunity and we also hope to receive support in the areas where we are weak and thank you.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Thank you very much, Maw. Thank you for your participation in this podcast. Thank you very much, Lora. Thank you, Ian. It was amazing to have you here with us today.

Lora Ksieniewicz: Thank you for having us.

Maw Hpray Myar: Thank you so much.

Xhesjana Haxhiu: Three urgent calls to action emerged from our speakers today.

Maw’s plea for us to truly listen to communities, not to speak for them, but to recognise the wisdom already present in their traditions and cultural practices.

Ian’s vision for moving beyond short-term projects towards evidence-based, long-term ecosystems that connect cultural actors, mental health practitioners and policymakers, supported by institutional commitments like the British Council‘s enduring work and the EU’s Cultural Compass.

Lora’s reminder that connecting people across contexts is fundamental, and that wellness and culture aren’t luxuries, they’re as essential as food and shelter for living with dignity.

Thank you to our partners, culture Solutions and ASEF Culture360 for making this dialogue possible. This podcast is published on culture360.asef.org and culturesolutions.eu and is available on Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts. Please follow, like and share both episodes. These conversations matter and the more people who hear them, the closer we get to the systemic change we need. 

Thank you for spending time with us.