RIGA.- Visitors to the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga have access to a new audio project in the museum’s mobile app The Route of Wellbeing, which encourages them to get acquainted with the permanent display using meditative and awareness-raising techniques.

Now, when mental well-being has become one of the most significant issues of our time in connection with various world events, there is a growing awareness of the importance of paying attention to the health of both the body and the mind. In response, the project team wants to highlight the potential of art and art museums to promote a positive, soothing, and harmonizing personal experience.

21st century life for a large part of society is associated with the development and consumption of content in the digital environment, as well as with regular anxiety, overload, uniform sensory experiences, or routines. The Route of Wellbeing is an invitation to get to know the art museum in a more personal way, to enjoy time alone and in the peaceful environment of art, to experience an alternative feeling adventure, promoting your awareness and mental well-being.

The Route of Wellbeing is available free of charge in the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) mobile app in Latvian, Russian and English. Audio stories take the visitor through 12 thematic stops in the permanent display, looking at issues such as friendship, daring, everyday life, loss and the unknown, each offering stories on the subject prepared by art historians, as well as special tasks designed by an art therapist to explore themselves with the art museum and works. It takes about 60 minutes to complete the route, but the project developers invite you to enjoy it at your own, individual pace, focusing on personal experience.

The audiovisual content was created in an interdisciplinary collaboration between the museum’s professionals, art therapist Diāna Serga, composer Jēkabs Nīmanis, artist Krista Miltiņa, voice actors Andris Keišs, Mikhail Karasikov and Pēteris Eglītis.

The mobile app can be downloaded from the Google Play and the AppStore.

The project has been implemented thanks to the target programme of State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia KultūrELPA.