Restoring the Balance the effect of arts participation on wellbeing and health Paul Devlin Voluntary Arts England PO Box 1056 Newcastle upon Tyne NE99 1UE T: 0191 230 4464 E: [email protected] www.vaengland.org.uk ISBN: 978-1-899687-55-8 Contents Foreword by the Rt Hon Margaret Hodge, MBE, MP 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 10 Section One: What the experts think 12 • Lord Howarth of Newport, CBE 13 CONTENTS • Professor Louis Appleby, CBE 16 • Mike White 19 • Professor Stephen Clift 23 Section Two: Case Studies 27 • John de Mearns 28 • Sylverine D’zenyo 32 • Julia Hall 34 • Melanie Uys 38 • Tim Kidner 40 • Maggi Gamble 43 • Kevin Brennan, MP 46 • Bristol Wellbeing Choir 48 • Christopher Dawson 52 • Maggie Sorbie & Daphne Cushnie 54 • Gus Garside & Brian Rogers 57 • Brian Bell 60 • Openart Studio, Darlington 64 Summary 66 A Manifesto for Participation in the Arts and Crafts 73 Further Information 78 C ONTENTS Contents Contents Foreword FOREWORD gives art both its intrinsic benefit and its power to make a positive impact on people’s wellbeing. It’s something that artists have known for OREWORD thousands of years. As Aeschylus, father of F the Greek tragedy said “words are the physicians of a mind diseased.” But it’s something that policy makers and funders are only beginning to fully understand. So I’m delighted that Voluntary Arts England have brought together some of the people who are leading the way in improving people’s wellbeing through participation in the arts. They are the ones who can see the effect it can have at first hand and the ones who must help spread the message more widely. I hope that this publication can further the The importance of wellbeing as a concept debate, and lend greater weight to the is gaining increasing recognition. Money argument that the arts and wellbeing are and income may contribute to people’s indivisible. They should be treated as such, sense of wellbeing but the two are not both by artists and health practitioners, and always completely interdependent. Our by those in charge of arts and healthcare wellbeing is vital to our health and to our policy. effectiveness at work and in the community. The place of art in creating Margaret Hodge and supporting feelings of wellbeing is vital. Minister for Culture & Tourism Department for Culture, Media and Sport Art is based on feeling - be it a Mahler Symphony, a Rothko masterpiece or a Sylvia Plath poem - art can raise the spirits and strengthen the soul, it can help us make sense of our surroundings and, as Sir Brian McMaster put it in his review, Supporting Excellence in the Arts, it can fundamentally affect and change an individual. It is precisely this quality that F OREWORD Foreword Foreword 6 Acknowledgments Concept: ReemerJBailey. Foreword: Rt Hon Margaret Hodge, MBE, MP. NTS Contributors: Professor Louis Appleby, ME CBE, Brian Bell, Kevin Brennan, MP, Professor Stephen Clift, Hannah Currant, Daphne Cushnie, Bonnie Davies, Christopher Dawson, Maggi Gamble, Gus LEDG Garside, Julia Hall, Lord Howarth of W Newport, CBE, Tim Kidner, John de Mearns, Brian Rogers, Maggie Sorbie, Melanie Uys, Mike White, Sylverine NO D’zenyo. CK Additional help and support: Claire A English, Nick Pontefract, Nicky Puttick, David Richmond, Cherrie Trelogan. We gratefully acknowledge support from Arts Council England, North East. A ckn ow ledgme nts 8 Introduction Voluntary Arts England works towards in offering over 9 million people the an empowered, participative, fulfilled opportunity to participate regularly in the and healthy civil society by promoting arts and crafts. They help to unlock practical participation in the arts and potential, eradicate apathy and build crafts. We do this primarily by strong, happy, independent and fulfilled advocating for increased resources for individuals and communities. voluntary and amateur arts and crafts participation, sharing best practice and Restoring the Balance: the effect of arts empowering ordinary people to make, participation on wellbeing and health is a do, promote and present the arts and collection of interviews conducted crafts for themselves. We raise between May 2009 and July 2009. People NTRODUCTIONawareness of the contribution that arts from a wide range of backgrounds explain I participation makes to the wellbeing of how their wellbeing, their health and, in communities, social inclusion, lifelong some cases, their lives have been learning, active citizenship and transformed as a result of arts participation. volunteering. Also included is testimony from a range of experts offering insights into why the arts According to ‘Our Creative Talent: the and crafts play such a fundamental role in voluntary and amateur arts in England’ aiding peoples’ wellbeing and health. commissioned by the Department for Details of the recently launched manifesto Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council for participation in arts and crafts offer a England in 2008, there are currently in model of best practice, as do links to excess of 49,000 voluntary / amateur art related reports, research and and craft groups in England, accounting for organisations. an estimated one fifth of all arts engagement. These groups play a vital part The focus of Restoring the Balance is very much on how the arts contribute to good health rather than how the arts are used to combat ill health. While some of the people featured have suffered from medical ailments and disability the emphasis is not art therapy in the traditional sense, as valid as that may be. The emphasis is firmly on how regular participation in creative activities has benefited people physically, mentally, emotionally and socially, whether that be from access to the arts as a result of illness, as part of a quest for a better work / life balance, seeking to deal with stressful situations, or, in some cases, simply having a desire to be alive in more than just the physical sense. The interviews will also show a range of benefits to participating in arts activities such as increased physical fitness, social contact, lower levels of Introduction 10 stress, and increased education and skills. cornerstones of maintaining positive More importantly they also capture the mental health and wellbeing. The other fact that creativity on its own merit has an four steps: ‘Connect with the people equal if not much greater foothold in the around you, be physically active, take reasons behind improved wellbeing in notice of the world around you and give people. to others’ are all very strongly linked to participation in the arts and crafts. A message that will be reinforced early on is that in many cases people do not The people we have chosen to feature, immediately think about the benefits to for various reasons, have recognised the their health or wellbeing when they join an huge contribution that arts participation has art or craft group or start an individual made to their lives. They eloquently creative endeavour. Over recent years, communicate the direct correlation however, it has become more accepted between participation and wellbeing and that this is exactly what they are doing. It is show that the opportunity to do arts and the aim of this publication to reinforce that crafts in their own time and on their own message and, as a consequence, give terms has had a phenomenal effect on wider recognition to the value of arts their wellbeing. Indeed for these people a participation. The recent Foresight report world without the arts and crafts would be on Mental Capital and Wellbeing found a much less healthy place to be. that to ‘Keep Learning’ is one of the I IntroductionNTRODUCTION 11 SectionW HAT T HE E XPERTS OneT HINK Lord Howarth of Newport was a “Research has documented and Member of Parliament from 1983 until demonstrated the very concrete benefits 2005 becoming Minister for the Arts at of the arts in terms of good health. For HINK the Department for Culture, Media and example Dr Rosalia Staricoff’s arts research T Sport in 1998 and a life peer in 2005. He project at the Chelsea and Westminster continues to take an active interest in hospital is a classic reference point where the contribution that arts and crafts she did very rigorous research, examining make to peoples health and wellbeing. patient recovery times and staff turnover. On a variety of measures she was able to “The debate continues among convincingly correlate improved professionals and practitioners about the performance with the impact of the arts. XPERTS language that we ought to be using and Additionally, some of the new technologies E what language we can most productively that are now available, for example non use in our dialogue with Government – intrusive brain mapping, are being used should we talk about ‘arts in health’ or ‘arts very excitingly and instructively, and we are HE and wellbeing’, should the emphasis be on now much closer to a precise T the arts contributing to a vibrant and understanding of what happens in the brain healthy society or should the emphasis be when someone has an aesthetic more specifically on what the arts can do experience, and what the psychosomatic to improve recovery rates on the part of links may be that make these experiences HAT people that are sick in hospital. Clearly the physiologically beneficial. More recently a W arts can make a contribution at all these new international journal for arts and levels. health has been founded and one of its main purposes is to provide a forum for “The power of participating in the arts in research findings. There has been a wealth changing people’s lives has to do with the of sufficient and rigorous research in this CBE fact that it is so often an experience of field – a lot of anecdote, a lot of assertion achieving psychological or spiritual integrity.