Dr David Stokes has been the Chief Executive of The Halpern Charitable Foundation since March 2019.
The charity focuses on tackling mental health and social isolation through the arts, and also runs the well-known Nucleus Arts centres across Medway, supporting locally-based artists and increasing opportunities for creative business. David has a particular interest in the development of arts as a health tool, and developing standards in planning, evaluation and the communication of outcomes for arts practitioners.
Before joining The Halpern Charitable Foundation, David was the CEO of the Cleft Lip and Palate Association – the national charity for people affected by cleft; and prior to that had an extensive background in academic research and management, most recently running major collaborative research programmes at Imperial College London, including the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, and the Digital City Exchange smart cities programme.
He is currently deputy-chair of the Chatham Town Forum, the Love Chatham initiative, and Creative Medway. He is the lead-member for the Love Chatham festival, and Chinese New Year Festival. David is a representative on a multitude of projects, such as the Social Isolation Forum, the Innovation Board, Medway for Business, Medway Artist Forum, the VCS Leaders group. He has recently been appointed to the board of the Institute for Inclusive Communities and Environments
at the University of Greenwich, and as an Ambassador for Chatham Historic Dockyard.
Previously he was on the steering committees of a number of national research programmes and research centres including: SLUMBERS, Cleft Care UK, and the Centre for Appearance Research. He was part of the Council for Disabled Children, the Shared learning group on Public-Patient Involvement in research, the NHS Cleft Development Group, and chaired the steering group of the Appearance Collective in the UK. David was also until recently a course leader at Imperial College
London. Of course, he is also a co-director of the Kent Arts Conference.
MIAHAI: A Universal Tool for Reporting Creative Social Proscribing
In response to the global surge in mental health challenges, Creative Health initiatives offer promising solutions with profound societal and economic implications. This abstract proposes the implementation of strategic frameworks to enhance the effectiveness of Creative Health interventions. Central to this strategy is the introduction of the ‘Nucleus Matrix’ as a standardised planning and evaluation tool. This matrix, initially created by The Halpern Charitable Foundation aims to streamline assessment methodologies across charitable sectors. This talk introduces ‘MIAHAI’ (Minimum Information About Health Arts Interventions) as a universal reporting language, and describes the trial reporting tool. This tool, developed by Future Coders, promises to facilitate comprehensive data collection and analysis, essential for advancing techniques and methodologies in Creative Health practices.
The presentation highlights the launch of an online platform for MIAHAI, emphasising accessibility and user engagement. By fostering a cohesive approach to planning, evaluation, and reporting, stakeholders can expedite the integration of Creative Health into mainstream healthcare, addressing urgent mental health needs on a global scale.