Social prescribing
One in five people visit a GP for reasons that aren't fundamentally medical - including loneliness, debt or housing.
What is it?
What is it?
Social prescribing connects people to practical and emotional community support.
It can connect people to a range of activities that are typically provided by voluntary and community sector organisations such as volunteering, arts activities, group learning, gardening, befriending, cookery, healthy eating advice and a range of sports.
It can also help to cultivate the wider infrastructure of arts, cultural and other community activities (e.g. sport, nature) to support health and wellbeing.
Find your local partnership or network
Find your local partnership or network
We’ve put together some tips on how you can best approach social prescribing through partnerships and networks.
Link workers and wider local health care systems
For cultural organisations seeking to engage in social prescribing, link workers are key people to build relationships with. Speak with your local GP practice to establish contact as well as linking to your local voluntary sector forums and volunteer centres, with whom many link workers will already be in contact.
When reaching out, look for the overlap between what your organisation seeks to deliver and the needs that healthcare commissioners are trying to address.
Local arts and health networks
There are culture-led health and wellbeing networks around the country that can help you learn more about social prescribing in your area, including Arts and Health South West and the London Arts in Health Forum. Some operate on a local level, such as Leeds Art Health and Wellbeing Network, while some operate at a regional level, such as Arts Derbyshire and Arts and Health Network North East.
Make contact with other local arts organisations, museums or libraries, to find out if any local work is already taking place. But, if there’s nothing near you yet - what role could you play in bringing such a network together?
We also have leads for health and wellbeing work, across our area and artform teams - contact us for more information.
Additional resources
Additional resources
Find out how you can engage with and navigate social prescribing
Use the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance’s regularly updated portal. Get started >
Watch the NHS England webinar on ‘arts on prescription’ from John McMahon, our Senior Manager for Policy and Research, and Gavin Clayton, Director of Hoot Creative Arts in Huddersfield (requires registration to access content).
The Social Prescribing Network shares knowledge and best practice, to support social prescribing at local and national level, and to inform good quality research and evaluation.
The National Association of Link Workers is the UK’s largest independent network for this key cohort of social prescribing professionals.
Social prescribing in practice
Social prescribing in practice
There’s a variety of projects across England that already operate in this space, and arts and cultural organisations have played a key role in establishing social prescribing as a grass-roots movement, helping to lay the foundation for NHS England’s more recent plans for a universally available service.