Creative Health: An Introduction
What is Creative Health?
Creative Health is a cross-disciplinary field; it sits across culture, health and social care sectors. It focuses on creating and delivering creative activities and programmes to support and improve people’s mental and physical health, wellbeing and quality of life.
You might already be familiar with some of the well documented work, such as Parkinson’s Dance, which as well as offering a space to connect and support, also improves physical outcomes like posture and strength, or Singing for Lung health.
Creative Health is about understanding that the health of a person is dependent on a lot of things, and that social or economic factors play a huge role in whether someone will need to see a GP or develop a long-term health condition.
If we invest as a society in supporting people to live happier, more active, connected lives, we improve the health of that society.
Image: Anna Golding, Fingerprint Dance
The Benefits of Creative Health
Being creative is good for you. I know this because I’ve witnessed it time and time again in the feedback from people taking part. I also know it because I’m an artist, and I’ve experienced for myself how being creative supports me.
Being creative, can increase confidence, reduce anxiety, assist social-connectedness. It encourages things, like making time for yourself, finding joy, and sharing laughter, simple things that are really important, especially if your’re experiencing life challenges.
Join us in welcoming Gemma Alldred, our new freelance Arts and Health Lead for our Creative Health project. We’ve invited Gemma to talk more about Creative Health, her role and some exciting events over the coming months.
I describe myself as a theatre maker, specialising in arts and health practice.
I trained in Contemporary Theatre Practice (BA, MA) at York St John University, and I have professional experience writing, performing, and directing. Much of my passion for the arts lies in what I like to call ‘making theatre with people’, and I most often do this with people who want mental health support.
I’ve been working in Creative Health, since 2007 when I started working with a mental health charity based in York supporting their drama group, around the same time I co-founded an innovative, mental health and education organisation called Converge, and established Out of Character Theatre Company, comprising of people who use mental health services.
In 2013 I moved to Dorset, and started developing my practice working with recovering addicts. More recently, I’ve been working with Diverse City, leading on their community engagement programme, aimed at making change and diversifying cultural leadership.
Sometimes this work can also be really transformative for people, especially if someone has been ill for a long time, breaking free from the identity of patient or diagnosis can be a really important part of recovery – being creative offers people a chance to explore who they are, what they’re good at, and what matters to them away from their illness; I remember in the early days of my work, a participant saying to me:
“I used to introduce myself as [name] the Schizophrenic, and now I introduce myself as [name] the actor. I’ve realised I’m more than my illness, and that’s because of these sessions.”
These types of stories more than just one offs, or a nice bit of occasional feedback, we KNOW that this works, and we have a huge amount of evidence that shows that engaging in creative activities positively impacts mental and physical wellbeing.
This contributes to keeping people well for longer, which can reduce the need or frequency in accessing medical health services saving money for the NHS and reducing strain on services.
Image: Stepping Into Nature’s Sing and Stroll group Steph Aburrow
Creative Health For Dorset and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole
We are in exciting times, ‘Creative Health’ is a subject that is really making noise at a national level, increasingly we are starting to understand, that accessing creativity, just like being active, or getting into nature really works to help keep people healthy for longer!
For culture in Dorset, we want to develop and mobilise our potential so we can create more sustained opportunities and programmes for people to engage in culture as part of living well and staying healthy. This means thinking about ways culture, health, and social care could work more closely together, and what that might look like in Dorset.
I’m delighted to be working with The Arts Development Company as Arts and Health Lead to help develop and support the work we do in Dorset.
One of my key jobs will be to bring together the different people and organisations for a one day Symposium in Autumn 2023, which will ask the question, How can we develop Creative Health in Dorset?
Another part of my role is to research models from other places, and keep up to date with national developments, so we can inspire and inform best practice here. If you’re not already familiar with them, check out the brilliant and well established Create Gloucestershire, I’ve also included the names of some good organisations to take a look at in ‘Further Reading’ below.
It’s no small task. There are different languages, different priorities, different working cultures, different ideas about size and scope, different ways of evidencing, and different ways of funding work across the different sectors. It can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially when you want to focus on being creative
Through my experience, I hope I can bring some energy to help demystify the sector and support more artists working, or wanting to start working, in Creative Health. And also to support people in care professions to increase their understanding of the many brilliant, and outside of the box ideas artists can conceive, to contribute to supporting the health of people in our communities – creative thinkers are fantastic at finding new solutions in unexpected places!
How to Get Involved
My favourite part of this role is to connect with you. If creative health is an area you’re interested in, regardless of discipline or career stage, I’d love to chat with you.
Please email me: gemma.alldred@theartsdevelopmentcompany.org.uk
And keep an eye out for more news on the Creative Health for Dorset Symposium as we develop the planning.