Creating Connection
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For many, separation has been a defining characteristic of this period – as we’ve all been largely confined to our homes, prevented from seeing wider family and friends by our desire to protect each other. Many of our shared social spaces, including arts venues, museums and libraries as well as pubs, clubs, restaurants and beyond, have been closed or heavily restricted. Even those of us who’ve continued to attend workplaces physically rather than digitally have been unable to engage with colleagues or clients as we would have in the past.
The Covid-19 restrictions have also brought the most pronounced disruption for some of the social groups that research has long shown to be most subject to loneliness – including women, older people, young people, those with disabilities, and those experiencing unemployment. At the same time, many of us have been more exposed to circumstances that can further provoke or deepen feelings of loneliness – including bereavement, and employment or income instability. In turn, loneliness can exacerbate feelings of stress, anxiety or depression brought on by the pandemic.
Addressing loneliness
Many arts organisations have done incredible work during this period to support those in greatest need. Last autumn, we profiled amazing efforts by the likes of Entelechy and the South Bank Centre, finding creative ways to maintain and further strengthen connection, locally and nationally, with people at risk of loneliness and social isolation. With our partners, we also rolled out our Let’s Create Packs, a national programme of resources for children whilst schools were closed.
It’s crucial to remember though, that loneliness is a severe social challenge that predates Covid-19, and which society must continue to tackle post-pandemic, long after some sense of a return to ‘normal’ life has been consistently restored.
Whilst the Office for National Statistics considers that the past year has increased feelings of loneliness, with 7.2% of the adult population (about 3.7 million adults) reporting feeling lonely ‘often’ or ‘always’, the figures already sat at around 5% of people (about 2.6 million adults) beforehand. Including young people, some other surveys put the number of UK residents who regularly feel lonely, as high as 9 million people.
This represents not only an enormous social challenge, but a public health one, too. Research indicates that loneliness is worse for us than obesity and, with a roughly equivalent impact to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increases the risk of depression, coronary heart disease and stroke, high blood pressure, and cognitive decline and dementia. In fact, loneliness may even increase our risk of individual death by a deeply troubling 26%.
The role of culture and creativity
Given the enormous scale, impact and long-term nature of loneliness, it’s vital for all fields of society to help deliver solutions – and cultural and creative organisations, artists and activities all have a part to play. It’s clear that a huge portion of people’s engagement in culture can make a direct contribution – bringing us into shared spaces both in-person and online. Culture and creativity also connect us to both fellow audience members and participants, and to the minds of artists, creators and curators themselves – both living, and historic. As far back as 1621, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton reflected on this soothing power of the arts, describing music as ‘…a most present remedy: it expels cares, alters… grieved minds, and easeth in an instant.’
And this isn’t just common sense – there is ample-and-expanding hard evidence. Both museums and libraries have been shown to reduce loneliness, as have theatre, live music and other arts events. The scale of reach here is enormous – for example, there are over 2,500 accredited museums in England, with over 100 million visits per year; and over 3,000 public libraries, with over 214 million physical and 131 million online visits annually. Both are widely distributed across all areas of the country, with mobile libraries and museum collection loans boxes for settings like schools and care homes also representing valuable assets for community connection.
Recent research shows that even the more solitary creative activities – like reading alone, or listening to music at home – can be beneficial in reducing feelings of loneliness and isolation. There’s brilliant work going on across the country already, but it’s important to support the sector as a whole to more strongly understand such impacts; and also to build political, public and media awareness so that more people are able to benefit.
What we’re doing
At Arts Council England there’s a lot that we’re already doing towards this. We fed into the development of A Connected Society, the 2018 UK Government loneliness strategy, where the role of the arts and libraries were strongly acknowledged; and we also reflected this in 2020 in Let’s Create, our own ten-year strategy for culture and creativity.
Over the past three years, we’ve taken part in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Loneliness and the Loneliness Task Force, which both grew out of the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. We’ve also contributed to the Government’s Tackling Loneliness Network, and – alongside colleagues from Facebook – have co-chaired a related youth loneliness working group. Our recommendations and wider input across all of this work are included in Emerging Together: the Tackling Loneliness Network Action Plan, published last month by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.
We’ve been strongly engaged around research, too – helping to review the What Works Centre for Wellbeing’s Conceptual Review of Loneliness (2019), and being a partner to University College London’s current Community Covid research. We also fund the Centre for Cultural Value at the University of Leeds, and are a partner to the MARCH research network (which explores community assets and mental health), and the Royal Society of Public Health’s Arts, Health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group – all of which have incorporated loneliness into their work.
As well as the general contribution of cultural organisations and activities in addressing loneliness and social isolation, we’ve also been working hard on pilot programmes that create innovations around this issue. Loneliness is a key theme of our £1.8 million Thriving Communities Fund partnership with the National Academy for Social Prescribing, Historic England, Natural England and others. We’re also working with DCMS to focus £5 million of funding for targeted loneliness activities through extensions to both our Creative People and Places and Celebrating Age initiatives, and also to grow The Reading Agency’s Reading Well: Books on Prescription, and Reading Friends activities.
Next steps
If you’re an organisation or professional interested in loneliness, social isolation and the arts, the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance (one of our Sector Support Organisations) have compiled a selection of wider resources and support.
To find partner organisations in your local community, or activities near you to participate in directly for your own wellbeing, you can visit the interactive map of our National Portfolio Organisations; public libraries have reopened in Covid-safe format, and you can find your local service on the UK Government website; Historic UK provides a useful map of most museums; and Voluntary Arts maintain a searchable database of local arts and creative activities.
You can also join the online discussion using the hashtags #LetsTalkLoneliness, #LonelinessAwarenessWeek and #LonelinessAwarenessWeek2021.