Colonial Virus": COVID-19, creative arts and public health communication in Ghana.
Since March 2020, Ghana's creative arts communities have tracked the complex facets of the COVID-19 pandemic through various art forms. This paper reports a study that analysed selected 'COVID art forms' through arts and health and critical health psychology frameworks. Art forms produced between March and July 2020, and available in the public sphere - traditional media, social media and public spaces - were collated. The data consisted of comedy, cartoons, songs, murals and textile designs. Three key functions emerged from analysis: health promotion (comedy, cartoons, songs); disease prevention (masks); and improving the aesthetics of the healthcare environment (murals). Textile designs performed broader socio-cultural functions of memorialising and political advocacy. Similar to earlier HIV/AIDS and Ebola arts interventions in other African countries, these Ghanaian COVID art forms translated public health information on COVID-19 in ways that connected emotionally, created social awareness and improved public understanding. However, some art forms had limitations: for example, songs that edutained using fear-based strategies or promoting conspiracy theories on the origins and treatment of COVID-19, and state-sponsored visual art that represented public health messaging decoupled from socio-economic barriers to health protection. These were likely to undermine the public health communication goals of behaviour modification. We outline concrete approaches to incorporate creative arts into COVID-19 public health interventions and post-pandemic health systems strengthening in Ghana.


Funding
None declared.
['de-Graft Aikins|Ama|A|', 'Akoi-Jackson|Bernard|B|']
D001521:Behavior Therapy D000086382:COVID-19 D003405:Creativity D005869:Ghana D058015:Health Communication D006293:Health Promotion D006801:Humans D008512:Medicine in the Arts D011634:Public Health D000086402:SARS-CoV-2
COVID-19 creative arts public health communication Ghana behaviour change