London Arts and Health, in collaboration with Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, is conducting research into the scale,…
LAH: a year in review
It has been a very busy year for the sector across London and beyond, with lots of exciting milestones and developments both in the policy and practice arenas. It’s wonderful to see some of the sector development projects finally coming to fruition after dreaming and putting in lots of hard work into partnership building and sourcing funding in the background, including the launch of the Creative Health Quality Framework and the Artists’ Represent Recovery Network training programme. We wanted to do a round-up of some of the events, gatherings, and projects which happened in 2023, in order to celebrate and reflect on our collective achievements over the past year, and hope it might be useful for you to do the same before the end of the year!
January 2023: In January we took a visit to the warm and welcoming Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, Havering. This theatre has existed as a hub for high quality arts experiences and performances, as well as being a natural connector of local communities for over 70 years, and is home to the team helping to convene the Creative Health Havering network. The network has been developing over the last two years, and has a wide membership of people and organisations working across the different intersections of Creative Health. With members of the network we hosted a mapping exercise to explore and unveil the local Creative Health community assets supporting people’s health and wellbeing across the borough. This mapping work will be hosted on one of our websites, which is being updated in the new year, where you will also be able to upload and share information about your programmes and services, so stay tuned!
February 2023: In February we joined the ‘Reframing Mental Health in Museums and Galleries’ symposium, hosted at The Dulwich Picture Gallery in Southwark and funded by The Baring Foundation. This was an opportunity to hear from and network with some of the people and organisations featured in the Creatively Minded at the Museum report, and think about how best to use creative, socially engaged practice to support people experiencing mental health problems, while considering the strengths and challenges of using museum and galleries as spaces to host creative activities and programmes. As highlighted in Daniel Regan’s presentation, it is as important to consider the support package of the practitioners who deliver these projects. Organisations who employ freelance practitioners ‘need to create environments that make artists and staff feel safe and confident to talk about their needs and adjustments’. We were also reminded by Daniel about the different forms of support we need, in terms of practical versus the affective support. For example, when considering practical support, is their flexibility around how the budget can be used once a project has started? Do organisations and practitioners have a shared language and understanding of each others ways of working? These ideas were echoed in Seth Pimlott’s presentation, where he asked, how do we instil confidence in artist practitioners to take risks, which is especially important in The Chisenhale Galleries’ youth arts work, where they have been working with children in CAMHS, and using art to radically re-imagine models of support and care in CAMHS services, as well as exploring how the arts can increase agency to support children’s recovery. To see the keynote presentations and reflections from the day, please use the following link.
March 2023: On the 9th March we helped organise an event in Bethnal Green for Social Prescribing Day, in partnership with Social Action for Health, St Margaret’s House, Voicebox and Tower Hamlets Social Prescribing service. Conversations this year centred around how to improve offerings and services for men who are referred to social prescribing, given that research has shown that there is low representation of men across social prescribing referrals into the VCSE sector. Find reflections from the day in this blog post!
April 2023: April was an exciting time as we switched status from NPO to IPSO and were extremely grateful to receive 3 more years of Arts Council England core funding, to be able to continue to support the Creative Health sector across London and beyond!
May 2023: May was a whirlwind, preparing for Creativity and Wellbeing Week and the programmed headline events with our partners at CHWA. We had our first big in-person event since the pandemic, gathering together a passionate panel of advocates who believe in the importance arts and culture for wellbeing, to explore with our audience, what is the role of creativity in a health crisis? Find recordings of a selection of the online events on our youtube channels, London Arts and Health, Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance.
June 2023: In June we were delighted to attend the second UCL Masters in Creative Health Student Conference at the UCL East campus in Newham, to support our placement student Kaihao Luo. Kaihao is a multidisciplinary artist, and was really interested in exploring the structure of the Artists’ Represent Recovery Network, in terms of what motivated artists to apply, and how the web of relationships between programme convenors created value and opportunities for participants. We really appreciate all of the care and hard work Kaihao put into crafting this thesis, and look forward to incorporating his recommendations into future programmes and planning.
July 2023: During the summer, we were hosted at Queer Circle in Greenwich, for our quarterly London Action on Creative Health network meeting. During this meeting we were joined by Yasmin Jiang, one of the authors of the Queering Creative Health report, to discuss how the group could support the reccomendations coming from the report in their own respective spheres of work in the sector. We also had the opportunity to reflect on the Creative Health City Design sprints, which have been programmed by the Mayor of London’s Culture Team to co-produce a strategy for the capital.
August 2023: In August, we had the final training session for the first Artists’ Represent Recovery cohort at Queer Circle, where there was an opportunity for the Artists to meet the programme funders, and reflect on the programme. We are so grateful for the team who have been involved in this vital programme, Daniel Regan from Arts and Health Hub, as well as Rachel, Sasha and Jide from Raw Material Music and Media. Further thanks and gratitude to all the other artists and facilitators who have made this programme happen! See this blog post on The Baring Foundation website for more reflections on the programme.
September 2023: The Creative Health Quality Framework has been funded by ACE and in development for the last year by Jane Willis and CHWA, with support from LAH and a wide variety of practitioners working across the sector. Over the next year, the framework will be used by different stakeholders to create case studies, and help further develop the framework to make it reflective of the needs and ways of working across the sector. Find all of the framework materials here.
October 2023: The whole LAH team travelled up to Barnsley to be part of the Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance conference, ‘Making Change’. The breadth of topics and workshops that the team programmed for attendees was fantastic, and it was really great to network and connect with people working outside of the capital, and understand the nuances of Creative Health work happening in different geographical areas, especially more rural communities.
November 2023: At the end of November, we welcomed 350 people to Battersea Arts Centre, and 40 people online, to come together to explore what London needs to become a Creative Health capital city. Conversations about the different elements of a Creative Health city were facilitated by long-term sector friends, as well as creating space for lots of new practitioners and organisations to share their thoughts and challenges on progressing, collaborating and pushing forward their work. To highlight the final verse of our host Arji’s poem, ‘Today was just a day, It’s tomorrow where the change begins’.
December 2023: In December, we attended the launch of the Creative Health Review by the National Centre for Creative Health at King’s College London. This review has been informed by a number of roundtable meetings to gather evidence from the sector around specific themes including Creative Health in Social Care and Creativity for Health and Wellbeing in the Education System. We look forward to continuing to use our platform to make sure the voices of grassroots organisations and practitioners are taken into account as the recommendations of this review are realised and put into motion.
Written by LAH’s Research Lead, Elle Charlton
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