Join the Creative Health and Wellbeing Forum for Dorset

3rd June 2024

I'm Gemma Alldred and as the Arts Development Company’s Creative Health Lead, I’m delighted to be writing to you to share the benefits of being creative on health and wellbeing.

What is Creative Health?

Creative Health is arts and culture activities and creative approaches to health that benefit our physical and/or mental health and wellbeing.

Creative Health can be delivered in homes, communities, Culture and Heritage organisations and healthcare settings, and it can help to prevent ill-health, promote healthy behaviours, and manage long-term conditions.

You can find out more in the National Centre for Creative Health’s ‘Introduction to Creative Health’
https://ncch.org.uk/uploads/Introduction-to-Creative-Health-Extract.pdf

You can find some of the brilliant Creative Health projects that happened in Dorset on our website
https://www.theartsdevelopmentcompany.org.uk/whats-happening/creative-health-projects-spotlight

The Impact of Creative Health

The Impact of Creative Health is far reaching. In 2019, NHS England reported:

Music therapy has been found to reduce agitation and the need for medication in 67% of people with dementia.

The Government’s own analysis of its data on arts participation rates in England estimates that the total annual NHS cost savings due to reductions in GP visits is £168.8 million.

Source: Getting creative to change people’s lives, NHS England blog post, 2019

Creativity is fundamental for our health and wellbeing, and supports us to live well for longer.

An ever-strengthening body of research tells us that engaging with creativity and culture improves mental health and wellbeing and can be used in the prevention, treatment, management and recovery of physical health conditions.

All Party Parliamentary Group, Creative Health Review, 2023

In Dorset and BCP we have great organisations and artists already working with people across the life stages to support health outcomes with a wide range of projects across the County.

The Next Steps

We know that more people could benefit from the incredible power of living creatively, and to do this we need to start increasing awareness of the potential for creativity to deliver as part of pathways of care.

• Share this blog post with your colleagues.
• Help us spread the word by speaking with your teams about Creative Health.
• Consider Creativity as one of the options you, or people in your team might offer to clients/patients to support their health maintenance and recovery.
• Get in touch with me to find out more.

If you’d like to know more about what Creative Health is, and how it can support you to support your patients or clients, please don’t hesitate to contact me for a 1-1 chat, or to arrange a time for me to share more about Creative Health at your team meetings: [email protected]

How to Get Involved as a Creative Health Professional

Creative Health & Wellbeing Forum for Dorset is a new network I set-up to bring together current and aspiring professionals working across Health and Culture.

Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1204549013566066 or email me: [email protected]

We also wrote a blog post outlining some useful resources, networks and newsletters dedicated to Creative Health:

https://www.theartsdevelopmentcompany.org.uk/whats-happening/creative-health