Techniques supporting well-being shared with students in Florence
In May 2023 a seminar day ‘Tailoring EUniwell regenerative spaces and interventions: learning to promote and maintain well-being and flourishing during work and academic study’ was held by the StudentWell team in Florence, Italy.
This theme is part of the Well-being and healthinitiative of EUniWell and specifically addressed ways for students to deal with exam anxiety. The organization and presentation of the workshop was a collaborative effort of the partners of StudentWell, as well as a collaboration between StudentWell and another EUniWell project called ShareToWell. The seminars were held in the beautiful Aula Magna of the UNIFI School of Agriculture. The seminar day and all its activities were possible given the project was awarded EUniWell research incubator support.
The workshop consisted of several sessions where students had the opportunity to try the different techniques for enhancing well-being that the partners have been working on over the academic year (22/23). Lali Lindell from the Linnaeus University facilitated a forest bathing session with both student and staff in the Cascine Park. Parallel sessions were held with other technique such as mindfulness. In the afternoon theory and research behind the intervention techniques was presented as well as results from the StudentWell project. From the Linnaeus University, Jenny Lovebo talked about forest bathing and its effects on both measured and perceived well-being. In addition to the practice and theory students also had space to discuss their level of well-being in relation to university studies and ideas of how to improve coping with stress.
The StudentWell team took the opportunity to keep an additional meeting to discuss the next step in the collaboration, and how to develop the research further. One idea addressed was to create a future project on the theme: "Tailoring EUniwell regenerative spaces and intervention, through the realization of a possible application framework of wellbeing and regeneration in EuniWell". Plans were also made to submit the first joint publication to a peer-reviewed open access journal.
