The impact of the arts on health and wellbeing in Wakefield
Lupset Celebration Event
“There has never been a better time for councils to lead local action that builds on the contribution of the arts, culture and heritage in creating prosperous, healthier and stronger and happier communities.” - ‘People, Culture, Place’ report by Local Government Association 2017
The Hut, Airedale
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Havercroft CoActive Monday Group
Welcome to Culture Cures
Culture Cures is our programme to deliver quality cultural activities addressing health inequalities to strengthen wellbeing within communities. This year we supported five arts organisations to deliver activities in Airedale, Havercroft and Ryhill and Lupset. I wish to thank CoActive, Cossins Music School, Stride Theatre, The Hepworth Wakefield and Theatre Royal Wakefield for their inspiration and commitment in delivering the work.
Having worked in the arts and health field for many years and having a good knowledge of Wakefield, we were well placed to create the Culture Cures film, a brand identity for Culture Cures and a booklet as part of the research project. Our own creative processes and experience has been to engage participants and local representatives in telling the story that needs to be told - that the arts do make a difference to health and well-being and are an effective and innovative way to inspire aspirations, create opportunities, make people feel happy and connected, increase understanding in differences and improve social cohesion.
We commissioned Prof. Owen Evans of Edge Hill University to undertake research into the impact of Culture Cures. An important part of this research has been commissioning local arts organisation, One to One Development Trust, to produce a wonderful film telling the stories of the impact of Culture Cures on the participants, communities and arts organisations. The film is an integral part of the research.
We look forward to bringing the films back to the communities involved, as well as to local and national audiences who are interested in advancing the arts and health agenda.
I wish to thank Judi and Owen for the film and research and, a big thank you to all the participants who took part and who supported the research and the making of the film.
Judi Alston - CEO/Creative Director, One to One Development Trust June 2018
Cllr Jacquie Speight - Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Arts, Culture and Leisure, Wakefield Council
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Evaluation Research Summary For three years, Culture Cures has been an annual cultural investment scheme overseen by Wakefield Council’s Culture team in conjunction with the Health Improvement team, which looks to support arts and cultural projects that can support the delivery of health and wellbeing outcomes. Arts and culture organisations within the Wakefield area are invited to bid competitively for funding to provide projects that use creativity to address specific issues within the local community. The successful arts organisations in 2017 were: CoActive; Cossins Music School; The Hepworth Wakefield; One to One Development Trust; Stride Theatre; and the Theatre Royal Wakefield. The Hut, Airedale - Celebration Event. Stride Theatre
“There is an increasing recognition of the holistic nature of health, and the arts have an important role in addressing this.” - Dr Andrew Furber Centre Director Public Health England Yorkshire and the Humber For 2017/18, the decision was taken to focus Culture Cures on supporting creative activities in three specific areas in the Wakefield district facing particular wellbeing challenges: Airedale, Lupset, and Ryhill and Havercroft. This change in focus brought with it interesting new challenges, but also rich opportunities, in establishing projects that have the potential to generate longer-term benefits in those areas. Each of the areas has a Community Anchor organisation, and in preparation for the 2017/18 programme the Council commissioned Nova, the voluntary and community sector support agency in the city, to work with the Community Anchors in these
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Filming Dr Andrew Furber, One to One Development Trust
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areas to research how local people perceive arts and culture, and the ways in which the arts might help improve health and wellbeing. The aim for Culture Cures in 2017/18 was then for the successful art organisations to work in conjunction with these grassroots groups in devising projects that would benefit the communities in question. Of particular relevance this year was that Culture Cures was running in the wake of the publication, in July 2017, of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPGAHW) Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing report on arts and health activity across the United Kingdom. After a series of in-depth round tables and requests for evidence over two years, the Creative Health report provides an important strategic snapshot of a range of activities nationwide, where arts and cultural activities have been used to tackle a variety of issues affecting people throughout the life course, including end of life, and concludes with specific recommendations for the future.
Lupset Men’s Group - The Hepworth
The key messages of the report stress that: • The arts can help us keep well, aid our recovery and support longer lives better lived • The arts can help meet major challenges facing health and social care: ageing, long-term conditions, loneliness and mental health • The arts can help save money in the health service and social care In his foreword, Rt Hon. Lord Howarth, co-chair of the APPGAHW, calls for an ‘informed and openminded willingness to accept that the arts can make a significant contribution to addressing a number of the pressing issues faced by our health and social
Lupset Lives - Stride Theatre
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care systems’. In fostering and developing the Culture Cures cultural commissioning programme over the past three years, Wakefield Council can be seen to have demonstrated the kind of commitment that Lord Howarth is calling for more broadly. Indeed, as the Local Government Association’s People, Culture, Place report from 2017 highlighted, ‘there has never been a better time for councils to lead local action that builds on the contribution of the arts, culture and heritage in creating prosperous, healthier and stronger and happier communities’. The final evaluation report on this year’s iteration of Culture Cures will show what can be achieved by local authority support for arts and creative projects of this kind in local communities, and will also make its own recommendations about what might still be carried out to develop and sustain these benefits. This brochure provides a short advance summary of the key findings in conjunction with the film produced by One to One Development Trust, a Wakefield-based charity with long years’ experience of working in community settings on projects focusing on heritage, health, wellbeing and digital storytelling. Havercroft and Ryhill Celebration Event
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The Hut, Airedale - Celebration Event, Theatre Royal Wakefield
The evaluation process focused on the analysis of qualitative data provided by the arts organisations in order to ascertain the potential wellbeing benefits of those participating in the various projects, but also those organising and leading the activities, as well as parents, carers and community stakeholders more widely. Each of the areas had a different wellbeing focus, with projects predicated on what were identified as particular needs in each locality. In Airedale, the primary focus was on school readiness. In Lupset, there was an emphasis on building intergenerational connections. In Ryhill and Havercroft, the projects were broadly aligned to providing activities for the community to foster pride and a sense of connection. What has emerged particularly strongly is the way each of the activities has generated moving, heart-warming and powerful stories of what involvement in Culture Cures has meant to many people. These stories reflect indeed the way that arts and culture can support longer lives better lived, build confidence, transform and stimulate aspiration, as well as celebrate the way communities can, and do, grow together through shared creative activities. Many of these moments are movingly captured in the film produced by One to One Development Trust to complement the evaluation process.
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If the challenge is to find ways of sustaining the benefits accrued from Culture Cures projects in the future – a challenge faced by all engaged in arts, health and wellbeing initiatives – then this year’s Culture Cures has also thrown up some additional, and unexpected, gains. Several stakeholders have been so inspired by the projects and activities devised by the arts organisations this year that they have adopted them in their professional practice, or will seek strategically to support such activities themselves. Additionally, a training workshop was delivered collaboratively for one organisation in Airedale, and this type of continuing professional development (CPD) activity could easily be replicated in the future. Some of the
Havercroft and Ryhill Celebration Event - CoActive
“Wakefield is very rich in its cultural offer and it’s important that everyone can access it.” - Cllr Jacquie Speight, Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Arts, Culture and Leisure The diverse range of activities culminated in a community celebration event in each of the areas, as well as some public performances, at which large numbers of those participating attended, and performed to audiences comprising members of the community who had not taken part in Culture Cures directly. Here then are the building blocks for future Culture Cures projects. Nevertheless, the final report will also acknowledge that there is a need to sustain the momentum generated this year, and there is still work to be done to reach those within the respective communities who remain hard to engage.
arts organisations themselves gained invaluable experience of working in new areas, or with new clients, and have found new areas of interest in the process, so that their own practice might evolve. The self-confidence acquired in this way bodes well for the future. An additional aspiration for Culture Cures this year was also to foster collaborations between the various art organisations involved, either in the form of working in partnership on projects, or devising complementary activities in the three areas. Where these collaborations worked well, there are
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Lupset Play Together Group at The Hepworth
opportunities to develop further projects of this kind, as evidenced by the CPD workshop. However, if there is a desire for future Culture Cures activities to be delivered in this way, a little more time needs to be set aside to allow for more coordinated and organic project development, as well as the integration of the communities into that process. The aspiration must be for truly co-produced projects in the future. Where this has happened, there have been some deeply moving, and powerful, stories.
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for developing arts, cultural and creative projects in communities already exists in Wakefield, which could easily be harnessed more strategically in the future, not only for Culture Cures activities, but potentially for arts and cultural projects within the city more broadly. What the evaluation has shown this year then is that there are demonstrable benefits to Culture Cures as a cultural investment and commissioning programme. Culture Cures has stimulated rich opportunities to develop and sustain certain projects in order to unlock what Tristi Brownett, a public health academic at Canterbury Christ Church University with a research specialism in the ways in which arts and culture generate community wellbeing and social capital, refers to as the ‘living legacy’ of such creative interventions. Applying the theory of change model advocated by the What Works Wellbeing project, Culture Cures can be seen as a key strategic policy
What has emerged particularly strongly throughout the evaluation process is the depth and breadth of experience and expertise amongst the arts organisations of working in, and with, communities. The richness of this local knowledge was displayed at the evaluation round table event at The Art House in May 2018. There was compelling evidence that a substantial local knowledge exchange network 8
intervention on the ground to help foster mechanisms for change within communities to help widen participation in arts and cultural activities, enhance social networks and thereby contribute to enhanced wellbeing both individually and in collectively. The evaluation has also shown that there are challenges in how best to work with community groups in order to develop initiatives on the ground, but also how to locate and engage the hardest to reach members of those communities, who do not perhaps readily avail themselves of local assets. By fostering and maintaining a local knowledge exchange network, in conjunction with an archive or repository of stories, information and data from previous Culture Cures projects, Wakefield Council, in conjunction with cultural partners in the city could develop a meaningful resource to be made available to all local organisations interested in working in the field of arts, health and wellbeing. Such a resource would not only act as a spur or guide for other organisations in how to devise successful creative
Lupset Play Together Group at The Hepworth
care homes, nurseries and other community groups seeking advice on how to develop initiatives of this kind to improve their professional practice. The CPD workshop in Airedale already highlights the potential of such a resource as a way of sustaining some of the benefits of Culture Cures this year, as does One to One Development Trust’s film, which not only captures the kinds of activities devised, but also prompts broader strategic reflection on their benefits for participants and stakeholders alike.
“When you work with the arts it really is a collaborative experience.” - Lisa Chandler Public Health Principal Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group projects to support wellbeing in communities, but would also help to build a rich local evidence base. It would provide information on the kinds of projects that have worked well, but just as importantly it could document projects that did not work and why. As such, it would be an invaluable learning tool. Moreover, it could also be a mechanism for providing mentoring for organisations new to the field of arts, health and wellbeing, but also for potential stakeholders such as
In essence, such a repository would operate at the local level in the same way as the national strategic centre proposed as the first recommendation in Creative Health, ‘to support the advance of good practice, promote collaboration, coordinate and disseminate research and inform policy and delivery’. In view of the successes generated by this and previous years’ Culture Cures programmes, and the experience gained by a growing number of local 9
Airedale School Readiness Walk, The Hepworth
arts organisations of different sizes and levels of experience within the city, Wakefield is well set with its rich cultural ecosystem to model in microcosm how the national centre might work nationally. In his foreword to Creative Health, Lord Howarth stresses how the arts should be seen as ‘a vital part of the public health landscape and therefore an essential responsibility of local authorities’. As an alliance between Wakefield Council’s Culture and Health Improvement teams, Culture Cures is a beacon of the kind of committed collaboration Lord Howarth advocates for the provision of health and wellbeing
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within communities. It is an invaluable initiative that deserves further sustained support. Wakefield has a genuine opportunity as a local authority, and a city, to contribute vigorously to national debates about the importance of arts and culture to health and wellbeing. Moreover, it is blessed as a city with a wonderful ecosystem of arts organisations and community groups who remain passionately committed to wellbeing. Here’s to the stories yet to be told!
Owen Evans
Snapethorpe Care Home and Sunbeam Nursery - Cossins Music School
“Culture Cures has brought young and old together through the arts in a celebration of the community.� - Lesley Wagstaff Centre Manager, St Georges Centre
Front inside cover and back cover photography by Jill Jennings All other imagery by One to One Development Trust
Junk Music Orchestra - Cossins Music School
culturecures.onetoonedevelopment.org www.wakefield.gov.uk/culture-cures Funded by
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