The three-year project, led by experts at Sheffield Hallam University, will establish "Creative Health Boards" - collaborative forums where voluntary and community organisations like charities, museums, and theatres will work with the NHS, local councils, and private sector to better integrate creative activities into health services.
Creative Health Boards will focus on making arts and cultural programs more accessible to communities at high risk of poor health. The project will pilot new approaches to funding, delivering, and measuring the health impacts of these creative activities.
The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, as part of their Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities programme.
Making arts and cultural programs more accessible
The research team brings together experts from Sheffield Hallam with community organisations, health service representatives and the private sector. Together they will establish six Creative Health Boards across the UK and develop tools including a Creative Health Handbook so the model can be widely replicated.
Chris Dayson, Professor of Voluntary Action, Health and Wellbeing at Sheffield Hallam and Principal Investigator of the project, said: “There is strong evidence that participating in creative activities like art and culture improves health and prevents disease, but we need to develop models that show how to successfully embed these activities into our health system. Our project aims to address that gap.
"Our goal is for arts, culture and creativity to be easily accessed by everyone, leading to better health and wellbeing. Creative health boards will help build stronger partnerships between community assets and health services to make that vision a reality."
The project builds on pioneering work in Doncaster, where an ‘Arts and Health Board’ was established in 2018 by key local organisations including darts (Doncaster's participatory arts charity), Cast (Doncaster’s theatre and creative hub), and City of Doncaster Council.
The project expects to benefit at-risk individuals and communities by expanding their access to funded creative programming. It will also equip community organisations with new skills in research, evidence use, and digital technology to improve their services.
Lucy Robertshaw, Director (Arts and Health), darts said: “We believe that everyone should be able to access participatory creative activities, in order to feel happier, healthier and more resilient. The challenge faced nationally is how to develop sustainable funding and commissioning models of creative health so that people can access activity wherever they live and whatever their circumstance.
“By working collaboratively with researchers, our participants, social prescribing, Cast Theatre and Heritage Doncaster, we will generate transferable learning about the value and impact of Creative Health and how it can be embedded within health and care systems to address health inequalities.”
Researchers emphasize that the model could be impactful beyond just creative health, helping embed community assets in health and social care systems more broadly.
Dr Susan Hampshaw, Director of the NIHR-funded Health Determinants Research Collaboration Doncaster, said: “Our health is impacted by the environment we live in, the economy and our social relationships. These are what we call wider determinants of health.
“Access to creative activities can help people to feel happier and healthier and research is key to discovering how we can improve community health and reduce health inequality. We are delighted to be a partner in this project which will generate learning in this area.”
