Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Creative Health and Wellbeing Conversations

Image: Pavilion Dance South West by Andy Beeson

Our Health+Culture event in January has led to some exciting new developments for Creative Health in Dorset.

On behalf of BCP’s Cultural Compact, Pavilion Dance South West is hosting a series of conversations to bring a wide range of creative organisations and individual practitioners from across BCP together to:

• Grow a shared understanding of what Creative Health is currently happening.

• Share good practice and encourage networking and partnership building.

• Feed into the developing Dorset Creative Health Strategy, and help to position BCP organisations to be part of programmes supported by NHS Dorset in future.

• Explore the health and social care sector’s approach to evaluation and measuring outcomes, and consider agreeing on a shared set of measurements to build a BCP-wide evidence base. 

Sessions will be facilitated by the Director of the National Centre for Creative Health, Alexandra Coulter, who brings a wealth of local and national experience.  Discussions will be focussed on the particular challenges and opportunities within BCP with the aim of generating concrete connections and ideas for those attending. 

Conversation Dates

All sessions are 10am-1pm at Pavilion Dance South West, Bournemouth, BH1 2BU.

Wednesday 25 September: Mapping BCP’s creative health landscape

• Guest speaker Rachel Massey of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance will share examples of successful creative health work from around the country to inspire us to think broadly about what is possible in BCP

• Round table mapping exercise, to plot and share knowledge of BCP’s current creative health providers, relationships & networks

• Networking and peer learning opportunities will be threaded through the session

Tuesday 22 October: Understanding BCP’s health needs & NHS pathways

Guest speaker Phil Hallet of Christchurch-based CODA will provide practical insights into what they have found works and what doesn’t in relation to 10+ years of working with the NHS

• Round table discussions hosted by Ashleigh Boreham, Deputy Chief Officer Strategy & Transformation, and his NHS Dorset colleagues focussed on 4 of the 5 NHS Dorset Forward Plan pillars*.  Bringing together health sector professionals and creative practitioners to gain a shared understanding of the health needs & NHS pathways across BCP for each pillar’s target demographic and then brainstorming creative activities that could be brought to bear on tackling those needs (either via signposting to/extending existing offers or by identifying priorities that the creative sector can develop a suitable offer in response to)

• Networking and peer learning opportunities

*NHS Dorset has produced a Joint Forward Plan 2023-28, which has five pillar outcomes:  

1.        Improve the lives of 100,000 people impacted by poor mental health  

2.        Prevent 55,000 children from becoming overweight by 2040  

3.        Reduce the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest & the poorest from 19 to 15 years by 2043  

4.        Increase the percentage of older people living well and independently in Dorset 

Thursday 21 November: Evaluation and data gathering through a health lens

• Guest speaker Julie Northam, Head of Research at Bournemouth’s Health Sciences University (formerly AECC), will share examples of effective evaluation & data gathering drawn from creative health initiatives around the country to inspire us to think broadly about what we could adopt individually and collectively

• Round table discussions to share current good practice amongst peers and explore the possibility of creating a shared ‘menu’ of evaluation methods to enable the collection and analysis of BCP-wide evidence for the impact of creative health work

• Networking and peer learning opportunities – providing space for you to forge/deepen creative relationships across the three sessions

Further information will be sent out to bookers in advance of each session.

Why these Conversations are Important Now

NHS Dorset is at a moment of significant change, with the new Integrated Care Board aiming to bring together NHS and other partners to focus on prevention and early intervention, along with working out in the community. These are both huge shifts from the traditional institution-based, reactive treatment model.  

The NHS are looking to work at ‘scale and pace’, and for interventions that can evidence both the health benefits and that they are attracting people who wouldn’t engage with more traditional health initiatives. 

There is a growing recognition of the role that the voluntary sector, and within that the creative sector, can play. NHS Dorset is in the early stages of developing a Creative Health Strategy, which represents a real opportunity for the cultural sector.