Juan Alberto García de Cubas

Juan Alberto García de Cubas is redesigning care models in hospitals and other care environments by introducing culture as a permanent health asset for recovery and wellbeing, turning it into a professionalized and institutionalized practice within healthcare systems. In doing so, he is not only improving patient and staff wellbeing but building a new field at the intersection of culture and health, reshaping how care is understood, delivered, and resourced.

Juan is redefining how healthcare systems understand and deliver care by integrating non-clinical inputs such as culture into care provision as structured health assets rather than optional complements. Through Cultura en Vena (CeV), he is not simply bringing art or music into hospitals, but building the institutional infrastructure that allows cultural practice to function as a recognized component of healthcare delivery, embedding culture within hospitals and other care environments through clinical protocols, professional roles, evaluation frameworks, and public partnerships, that enable non-clinical interventions to operate with legitimacy, continuity, and institutional support. Art and music are not the end goal, but the vehicles through which the model demonstrates that non-clinical interventions can measurably improve wellbeing, recovery processes, care environments, and alleviate the saturation of the system. In doing so, Juan is helping shift the institutional logic of care itself: from a model centered exclusively on biomedical treatment toward one that recognizes emotional, relational, and cultural dimensions as part of recovery and wellbeing.

While there is a growing body of evidence, including from the WHO, demonstrating the positive impact of arts and culture on health and even direct economic returns on public budgets, this knowledge has not translated into structured practice within healthcare systems. Cultural activities in hospitals have largely remained sporadic and volunteer-led. Juan transforms this gap by developing a professionalized model that integrates cultural practice into care delivery, through stable operational structures, trained roles, clinical coordination, and public-sector adoption.

This includes the creation of structured roles such as the “Músicos Internos Residentes” (MIR) (Intern Resident Musicians), integrating trained cultural professionals within hospital teams, as well as collaborations with major cultural institutions and museums to activate collections within healthcare and community settings. Iconic artworks are reinterpreted to open conversations about illness, dignity, and the body, turning cultural heritage into a tool for emotional and social processing.

Crucially, the model extends beyond patients to healthcare professionals, supporting emotional resilience and improving care environments. Culture becomes a shared resource for the entire care community.

This shift is already influencing how healthcare systems organize care, allocate resources, and define recovery. Cultural practice is beginning to enter institutional agreements and public policy frameworks, moving from discretionary programming to a recognized component of care delivery, influencing how resources are allocated and how recovery is understood.

Cultura en Vena is already operating through formal partnerships with public health systems, demonstrating a validated, replicable model that is generating growing interest across territories and countries, including Portugal and Latin America.

Health is widely understood as more than the absence of disease, encompassing mental, social, and emotional wellbeing. However, most care systems continue to operate through a predominantly biomedical lens, focusing on clinical treatment while leaving essential dimensions of recovery such as meaning, connection, dignity, and hope.

This gap persists despite growing international recognition. Evidence consolidated by the WHO shows that arts and culture can significantly contribute to prevention, treatment, and recovery, yet this knowledge has not been translated into structured practice within healthcare systems.

As a result, many care environments remain technically advanced but emotionally underperforming. Across the 4.87 million hospital discharges recorded annually in Spain, patients frequently experience anxiety, isolation, and loss of agency, while recovery continues to be defined primarily in clinical terms, with limited tools to address the psychological and relational factors that influence healing.

At the same time, healthcare professionals operate under sustained pressure in the context of aging populations, chronic illness, and rising mental health needs. Emotional strain and burnout are increasing, with around 18% of primary care professionals experiencing chronic exhaustion, yet systems offer few structured resources to support resilience as part of care itself.

Efforts to “humanize” healthcare exist, but they remain fragmented and dependent on local leadership, lacking institutional anchoring, shared standards, and stable funding. More broadly, health and culture systems continue to evolve in parallel, without the governance frameworks, protocols, or budgetary structures needed to integrate non-clinical practices into care delivery.

This reflects a deeper cultural barrier: while culture is valued, it is still perceived as complementary rather than as a necessary component of recovery. As a result, it rarely enters clinical pathways, strategic planning, or public health investment decisions.

The consequences are systemic. Care environments address disease but struggle to care for people holistically, while a large cultural workforce remains structurally disconnected from one of the country’s largest public systems. Ultimately, the problem is not the lack of evidence, talent, or need, but the persistence of a care model that does not yet recognize or integrate the full set of practices required for recovery and wellbeing.

Cultura en Vena operates through an integrated model where on-the-ground implementation, evidence generation, cross-institutional partnerships, and policy influence reinforce each other, enabling both practical adoption and long-term system change.

1. Institutional integration and territorial scaling

The strategy begins inside the system, working directly with hospital leadership and public health authorities to identify needs related to patient experience, staff wellbeing, and care of humanization. Rather than positioning culture as an external complement, the organization integrates it through formal agreements with public health systems, ensuring legitimacy, continuity, and alignment with institutional priorities.

The model is currently implemented in 18 hospitals across eight cities in Spain, including Madrid, Andalucía, Aragón, Galicia, Castilla y León, and Navarra. In each territory, implementation is anchored through alliances between hospitals, public administrations, and strategic funding partners, enabling shared responsibility and long-term sustainability. Cultura en Vena transfers its methodology through structured processes that include clinical coordination protocols, safety and ethical standards, mediation practices, and impact evaluation tools, while training local cultural mediators and hiring artists within each territory. This ensures that the model is both locally embedded and professionally sustained.

This approach allows the transition from pilot initiatives to regional frameworks, where multiple hospitals progressively adopt and integrate the model. A key milestone in scaling is the alliance with the Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC), one of Spain’s leading organizations in cancer care, supporting more than 150,000 patients, through which the model will be deployed in 19 additional hospitals, significantly accelerating national reach and institutional adoption.

2. Culture as structured care delivery

Within hospitals, Cultura en Vena integrates cultural interventions directly into care environments as part of patient and staff wellbeing strategies. Rather than asking patients to attend separate cultural activities, the model brings non-clinical practice into existing care spaces and routines, adapting interventions to the realities of each clinical setting. Trained musicians and cultural mediators work in coordination with healthcare teams in units such as oncology, intensive care, neonatology, mental health, and rehabilitation, delivering live music and artistic interactions inside waiting rooms, treatment areas, corridors, or patient rooms according to clinical protocols and patient conditions. In parallel, Cultura en Vena co-designs itinerant exhibitions with institutions such as the Museo del Prado and Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, installing curated reproductions and mediated artistic content within hospitals themselves to transform care environments and create opportunities for emotional processing, conversation, and human connection. These interventions are integrated into broader hospital humanization and wellbeing strategies, making culture a structured component of care delivery rather than an external or recreational activity.

On the other hand, Cultura en Vena activates cultural institutions as public spaces for health engagement and social reflection. Through exhibitions, public programs, and mediated experiences, museums become platforms where society collectively explores themes related to illness, care, vulnerability, aging, body image, and emotional wellbeing. At the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, for example, the annual “Art and Health” exhibitions reinterpret works from the museum’s collection through a health lens, inviting patients, families, healthcare professionals, and the broader public to engage in conversations that are often invisible within healthcare systems. This dimension of the strategy helps shift public perception of health from a purely clinical issue to a broader social and cultural responsibility. Together, these two levels, inside and outside hospitals, healthcare institutions and cultural institutions, create a bridge between clinical practice and public discourse, normalizing culture as a legitimate and valuable component of health and care across society.

A defining element of the model is the creation of new professional roles that allow non-clinical care practices to operate in a structured and coordinated way within healthcare systems. One of the roles is the “Músicos Internos Residentes” (MIR) model, through which trained musicians regularly work as part of care teams, bringing live music directly into care spaces such as patient rooms, common and specialized treatment areas. Rather than performing as occasional visitors or volunteers, these professionals operate within institutional protocols and in coordination with healthcare staff, adapting interventions to patient conditions, clinical rhythms, and emotional needs. This transforms music from an external activity into a structured and remunerated component of care environments.

Complementing this role, Cultura en Vena also introduces cultural mediators within hospitals. These professionals holistically coordinate the hospital’s non-clinical cultural programming, managing the relationship between healthcare teams, artists, museums, and external cultural institutions. Their role includes organizing the itinerant exhibitions inside hospitals, coordinating MIR interventions across units, developing wellbeing programs for healthcare staff to promote emotional reflection and collective processing in high-pressure environments, and ensuring that all cultural activities align with clinical protocols, safety standards, and institutional priorities. By institutionalizing these roles and functions, Juan is helping hospitals build the internal capacity to incorporate culture as part of holistic care rather than depending on isolated initiatives or volunteer efforts.

At the core of the strategy is the generation of clinical evidence within healthcare settings. Between 2015 and 2019, Cultura en Vena conducted seven studies approved by hospital ethics committees across multiple departments, including intensive care, neonatology, cardiology, and rehabilitation. These studies, involving more than 400 patients and over 2,000 hours of intervention, demonstrated consistent reductions in anxiety and emotional distress, improvements in perceived well-being, and strong acceptance among healthcare professionals. Ongoing implementation continues to reinforce these results: in 2025, data collected from 813 participants across three hospitals showed that close to 90% of patients, families, and staff reported positive impact, with 97% recommending the experience and 87% of healthcare professionals reporting improved wellbeing. In neurology, interventions with patients suffering from chronic treatment-resistant migraines showed reductions in pain, anxiety, depression, and stress, alongside measurable improvements in quality-of-life indicators. In intensive care and cardiology units, studies explored the impact of live music on physiological markers such as blood pressure, heart rate variability, agitation, and sedoanalgesia requirements, demonstrating the feasibility of integrating non-pharmacological interventions into acute care environments. In neonatology, researchers used non-invasive cardiac monitoring systems to observe improved comfort and tolerance among premature newborns exposed to live music interventions. These findings have been consolidated into a White Paper that serves as a clinical and operational reference for replication.

3. Field building and policy influence

Beyond implementation, the strategy contributes to structuring the field at national and international levels. Cultura en Vena provides shared language, tested methodologies, and visible case studies that are helping to consolidate an emerging culture–health field.

This work has already led to concrete institutional shifts. Juan has convened high-level dialogues between Spain’s Ministry of Health and Ministry of Culture, contributing to the first formal agreements to integrate arts into healthcare frameworks. His work has also informed national initiatives such as the Cultural Rights Plan (2025) and is influencing how public administrations conceptualize culture as a determinant of health. Most recently, the Ministry of Culture has tasked Cultura en Vena with developing the first national guide on culture and health, co-created with experts and ecosystem actors, thereby positioning Cultura en Vena as a leading reference in the field. These advances signal a shift from pilot-based innovation to policy-backed implementation, enabling cultural practice to access stable funding streams and become embedded in public health strategies, showing the moment of systemic take-off.

At the international level, Cultura en Vena participates in European platforms such as Arts & Health Europe, selected as the sole Spanish representative of Spain, and in initiatives linked to Culture for Health and Horizon programs, where shared standards and competencies are being defined. Its work has also entered global cultural policy discussions, including UNESCO processes such as MONDIACULT, where Spain’s experience is increasingly referenced as a practical example of cross-sector integration grounded in real implementation.

At the same time, the organization is influencing the cultural sector itself, working with museums and institutions to reposition culture as an applied practice within systems of care. This dual movement, transforming both health and culture sectors, is progressively aligning actors across systems and accelerating adoption.

Long-term ambition is normalization: for cultural practice to become a standard, integrated component of healthcare systems. As hospitals adopt protocols, public administrations incorporate culture into policy, and cultural institutions reorient their role, the model becomes self-sustaining, persisting beyond Cultura en Vena itself.

Juan Alberto García de Cubas’ trajectory brings together two dimensions that have shaped his life from an early age: culture and care. He grew up in an environment where creativity and responsibility coexisted, his mother embodying emotional steadiness and care, and his father creating solutions tailored to people’s needs. A tangible example was a tailor-made dining table, requested by Juan´s mother and built by Juan´s father, adapted to the height of his young children so they could have their own space. Juan internalized this as more than craftsmanship: it was an early lesson in how design and architecture can be tools to improve everyday life and generate impact on others.

A consistent pattern emerged early on: identifying a passion, bringing people together around it, and giving it structure. Whether through creative communities, music, or artistic experimentation, Juan repeatedly transformed individual interests into collective initiatives—an instinct that would later define his work as a social entrepreneur.

Trained as an architect at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM), he built a successful career at the intersection of design, culture, and institutions. In 2000, he founded El Taller, a museography and exhibition design studio collaborating with leading institutions such as the Museo del Prado, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, and Fundación Telefónica. His work focused on translating cultural narratives into meaningful public experiences.

A defining turning point came during the illness and hospitalization of his only sister. Accompanying her through cancer treatment exposed him to the emotional intensity of hospital environments and the limitations of a system centered almost exclusively on clinical care. In that context, he witnessed how music and artistic expression could create moments of relief and dignity, leading to a fundamental question: if culture clearly supports wellbeing, why is it not structurally integrated into healthcare?

In 2012, he founded Música en Vena, initially as a volunteer initiative bringing live music into hospitals. As demand grew and impact became evident, he evolved the model into Cultura en Vena in 2019, building a professional framework based on clinical protocols, research, and institutional partnerships. He later left his previous career to fully dedicate himself to scaling this vision.

Juan combines artistic sensitivity with strong systems thinking. He is able to move across worlds that rarely intersect—culture, healthcare, and public policy and translate between them. Rather than focusing on visibility, he builds structures that institutions can adopt, fund, and sustain over time. His driving conviction is that culture is not an accessory to care, but an essential part of it and his work is making that belief structurally real.