Co-locating art and health: engaging civil society to create an enabling environment to respond to HIV in Indonesia.

Background This paper will report on the successful co-location of a community-based arts and sexual health project that aimed to engage, educate and create testing, treatment and care pathways at a co-located mobile sexual health clinic and community-controlled art gallery in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Mixed methods were used to evaluate the project, including a visitor (n = 1181) and artist (n = 85) log book, a convenience audience survey (n = 231), and qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 13) with artists and audience to explore the effect of arts-based activities on access to sexual health information and services, and stigma and discrimination. In total, 85 artists curated five separate exhibitions that were attended by 1181 people, of which 62% were aged ≤24 years. Gallery attendance improved awareness and participatory and interactive engagement with sexual health information through a medium described as interesting, fun, cool, and unique. The co-located clinic facilitated informal pathways to sexual health services, including HIV/AIDS testing, treatment, and care. Importantly, the project created shared understandings and empathy that challenged stereotypes and myths, reducing stigmatising beliefs and practices. Arts-based programs are transformative and can be effectively implemented, replicated and scaled up in low-resource settings to create awareness and initiate for HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and care. Art-based health programs engages people in their communities, mobilises civil society, builds enabling environments to reduce stigma and discrimination and improves access to testing and prevention; essential features needed to end AIDS in Indonesia (and the Southeast Asia region) while improving the lives of those most vulnerable to infection.