Workshop participants creating artwork visualizing nutrition messages (Photo: WHO/Simon van Woerden).

12 December 2017 - From 10 to 16 December, forty painters, musicians, actors, choreographers, and board game designers gathered in Karmakol, Northern State, to co-create health promotion materials in three workshops as part of the Karmakol Festival, the first of its kind in Sudan. With support from the World Health Organization and in close partnership with the Health Promotion experts from Sudan's Federal and Northern State Health Ministry, the forty participants all added their creative energies and talents to help promote health for the people of Sudan.

The Karmakol Festival, which lasts from 1 to 21 December, brings hundreds of artists together from Sudan, the region, and across the globe, for three weeks of cultural celebrations. The

WHO's three workshops all focused on a different health topic, and used a different artistic method to create new health promotion artwork. Musicians, actors and choreographers created a piece of musical theatre to promote hygiene and sanitation; visual artists illustrated and interpreted messages on proper nutrition; and board game designers created prototypes of two board games to fight antimicrobial resistance.

After the festival concludes, the drafts will be further developed and shared with Ministry of Health and sector partners, for their free use and dissemination. The participating artists will also be called upon for future creative collaborations with WHO, to ensure the best, most effective, and most creative health promotion activities.