Live well, feel better - be creative

This week we’re celebrating Creativity and Wellbeing Week and the positive impact that creativity and culture has on our health.  

We know that taking part in creative activities helps us live well and feel better, whatever your age. From singing to samba, dancing to drawing, culture can reduce mental health challenges such as depression, make you feel happier and more connected, and help improve physical health, such as tackling chronic pain or lung conditions.  

Many of us know this intuitively – I always feel better after singing with my weekly community choir or reading a story with my children – and there’s plenty of evidence to back up why this is. (Have a read of this research summary or this evidence, or if you’ve only got one minute, watch this!)   

So what’s the plan?  

The Arts Council has a long history of working in creative health and last summer, we launched our Creative Health and Wellbeing plan. This sets out how we will develop and promote creative health as a fundamental part of living well, for individual lives, in communities and globally.  

The plan will help us achieve the goals of our 10-year strategy, Let’s Create, by supporting practitioners’ skills and wellbeing, by linking with our work in places where creative health is a priority, and by strengthening our partnerships with the NHS, social care and public health. 

There is a wealth of activity happening in cultural venues, communities, hospitals and care homes up and down the country, led by skilled and inspiring practitioners. Arts Council invests in a huge range of organisations and individuals who deliver this creative health and social prescribing activity.

Backed by investment 

It’s all very well having a plan in place. But we need to follow it! I’m really proud to say that our investment in this area is growing. We have quadrupled our National Lottery project grants for creative health over the past five years (from £4million in 2016/17 to around £16million in 202½2) and one third of the new National Portfolio will be delivering work in creative health over the next three years.  

This includes specialist organisations, such as new joiner Hospital Rooms who bring world class art and creative programmes to mental health hospitals, as well as organisations for whom it is a part of their wider offer – Manchester Camerata’s long-running work bringing music to people living with dementia, or The Reading Agency and Libraries Connected’s Reading Well scheme across every library service in England, to name just two examples.  

We also recently announced investment in a programme of Creative Health Associates through a grant of £600,000 for the National Centre for Creative Health. This national programme will work across all seven NHS regions to broker stronger connections between health and culture.

Join in! 

There are many activities happening across the country this week – and all year round – supporting people to live well through brilliant and beautiful creative activity. We hope you too will get involved! 

You can find out more about Creativity and Wellbeing Week by visiting their website or searching for #CreativityandWellbeingWeek on social media.