Arts and Health: Culture, Community and Co-Creativity

Cultural and creative activities, such as art, working with museum objects or engaging with the environment have been shown to benefit human health and wellbeing. This module will provide you with the opportunity to explore your own creativity through practice-based arts workshops facilitated by leading practitioners in different mediums and to apply some of these techniques to the co-creation of a piece of artwork in a range of community settings. You will be introduced to the field of arts and health and to the challenges of evaluating the health impacts of arts and health projects through a series of parallel seminars providing theoretical grounding in arts and health, the social determinants of community health, social prescription and a range of cultural attitudes to health and illness.

Building on the collaborative module developed with Birkbeck last year and the Arts & Health taster sessions previously, this innovative and practice-led module will bring together experts, creative practitioners, service-users, and students to work in partnership to co-create a piece of artwork on a medical humanities topic. It will involve collaborating with participants in arts & health activities in a range of settings such as:  Furzedown older persons project, Furzedown primary school, Wandsworth Prison, St George’s Art Team (eg dance for parkinsons and ICU bedside music) and Dulwich Picture Gallery and will be underpinned by theoretical seminars.

As a key outcome, you will be supported in co-developing your own original piece of artwork (in any form such as visual art, dance, music, poetry, graphic novel, play) with service users from a range of local community partners and to produce a summative portfolio including a written element which documents and analyses the creative and research process.

On successful completion of the course you will be able to:

• demonstrate a critical understanding of arts and health and of the value of engaging in creative practices to health generation/improvement
• demonstrate an ability to work outside your comfort zone and with others – here community service users - as equals/partners, co-creating an original artwork
• reflect critically, bringing together theory, observations and personal experience of a range of creative practices and mediums and to communicate this effectively in various formats.
• have acquired a demonstrated ability to work independently
• engage sensitively and respectfully with communities outside the University, recognising the challenges faced by and the expertise of local patient groups prior to meeting them in a healthcare setting.

The module will start in 2025 and run for 11 weeks.

Feedback from students taking the taster arts and health community placements which fed into the development of this module:

Overall, the placements increased my confidence. I am immensely grateful for this enriching opportunity, through which I was able to practise my communication skills, work in a team and to learn about the diverse experiences and treatment of young and elderly people in society.     

Being a part of this placement has enabled me to appreciate the significance of art in promoting wellbeing, as well as working with two contrasting age groups. This invaluable experience will be a vital part of my journey in the medical field as I will be interacting with patients of all ages. Furthermore, I am hoping to pursue a career as a paediatrician; my convers. My conversations with primary school children has increased my confidence remarkably.

This experience has been eye opening for me and certainly taught me a lot about how arts can help boost health.

For me the take-home message from attending the Furzedown project was recognising the absolute autonomy older people wish to have, ensuring we do our utmost as a society to assist with the maintenance of this autonomy will provide happier, healthier older people.  Projects like the Furzedown Project are something that should be an absolute priority for the health service and local authorities as healthcare costs increase exponentially for this population.

I feel it is crucial as future healthcare professionals to become better-rounded in our approach to diagnosing and treating illnesses. We should be given more opportunities to go out into the community and explore other potential forms of relaxation and therapy that are non-conventional but more enjoyable for the patient so that in the future we all can take full advantage of them.