Mind your language: avoiding the ‘f’ word in Creative Health

Article written by Sallie Varnam, Development Manager for BrightSparks Arts in Mental Health CIO, and 2024 Fundraising Fellow

‘There is no why to the opening of a rose’ – to paraphrase 17^th century German poet Angelus Silesius – is a notion arts professionals, or certainly those of us who rely on public funding, will have considered time and time again. How do we explain the impact of art without sounding a bit, well, fluffy?

The work we create, commission or produce using grants, commissioned funds or Trusts and Foundations funding will need to fulfil outcome requirements. Art can be delightful, inspiring, entertaining and radical but must generally do more than be for its own sake in the era of Let’s Create.

We’ve long known of outcomes, impacts and KPIs and have collected the case studies and feedback data, but still hear the ‘f’ word (fluffy) used to describe our practice far too frequently.

In the field of creative health, art must work harder still; it is brought into a territory where walls are white, spaces are sterile, and resources are tight. Evaluation is imperative, and in a world where empirical information and clinical, peer reviewed research of large-scale trials are king, we need data, and lots of it.

We know innately that art and creativity benefits our health and wellbeing – arts in healthcare has a long history – from the medieval alms-houses adorned with frescos to the world class collections of modern art in major hospitals around the globe, there is plenty of evidence that seeing great art in healthcare settings is good for us. The field of creative health has made huge progress in demonstrating art’s role in healthcare, laid out in the APPG’s 2017 Inquiry reportand 2023 review.

However, convincing an already overburdened NHS of the role creative health has to play is complex, particularly when we are still struggling to find a common language.

The Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance commissioned creative health consultant Jane Willis to produce the Creative Health Quality Framework, the result of collaboration of expert arts practitioners, researchers, health professionals and funders, which outlines a set of principles to guide good practice. The seven principles use language that resonates across fields of arts, health, fundraising and business – Person-Centred, Equitable, Safe, Creative, Collaborative, Realistic, Reflective, Sustainable – and can be applied by all creative health projects, creating a consistency of approach and a shared tool to establish and recognise quality in creative health programmes.

The work of the Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance, together with the National Centre for Creative Health is elevating the position of creative health and professionalising the field through developing networks, training, information sharing and advocacy within integrated care systems. Great strides have been made in parts of the UK, such as Greater Manchester, which has committed to becoming a ‘creative health city region’, the first of its kind in the world, recognising the role of creativity, culture and heritage in addressing inequalities and improving health and wellbeing.

In Leicestershire, the Creative Health Network has recently been launched through a partnership with the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies, BrightSparks Arts in Mental Health CIO, and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. The Network will bring together academics with clinicians, artists, creative organisations and communities to develop new ways of working across sectors, and a shared evaluation framework. Within this, data will be collected at scale, a robust evidence base fed by multidisciplinary researchers will be created to support funding and commissioning opportunities.

One of the anticipated challenges for the Network will be to develop shared understanding and vocabulary between health and creativity. We will be able to demonstrate the clinical benefits of art at each life stage – from music in birthing suites reducing labour times, to dance in Parkinson’s care restoring movement.

But, whilst we can take care to articulate the clinical impact of the arts, we cannot reduce its wider transformative power. Finding this balance is crucial to building partnerships, growing audiences, and securing new funding.

Have you mastered the art of connecting creativity and health? Share your thoughts with us @artsfundraising