Anna Woolf FRSA is London Arts and Health’s CEO. Anna has lived experience of birth trauma and has worked with UCH maternity (2018) Tea and Toast: Poems for New Mums (which was acquired by the Wellcome Collection in 2025), Maternal Journal Maternal Journal (2021) and The Mum Poem Press (2021) Songs of Love and Strength exploring this topic. Anna is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Society of Public Health. She is a trustee for the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society which was founded by her own Mother who has RA, 21 years ago as a patient-led charity, supporting people living with Arthritis as well as a trustee for Clod Ensemble supporting the Performing Medicine programme. Anna is a volunteer on the Wren Project supporting newly diagnosed people with auto-immune disease.
I have worked for over 14 years as a freelance lecturer at RCSSD teaching undergraduates applied theatre and performing health, I also freelanced as a theatre practitioner and has worked with a range of organisations, such as Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, Box Clever Theatre, Talawa Theatre, Peer Productions and C&T Theatre to name but a few. From 2018-2024 I worked towards my PhD in Theatre and Health completing practice and my upgrade but ultimately have taken a pause on this process as I struggle to reconcile the capacity a PhD required alongside being a mother, a CEO, and managing chronic health conditions. I call this process failing upwards. In 2024 I was shortlisted for a Churchill Fellowship and a Clore Fellowship.
At London Arts and Health, I have driven content and ideas around cultural social prescribing, practitioner care, diversifying the sector and networking with key stakeholders in Creative Health across London. I authored the Cultural Social Prescribing Myth Buster, co-chair the London Action on Creative Health stakeholder group and run initiatives such as the Creative Health Sandpit, the Artists’ Represent Recovery Network, Advocates for Representation in Creative Health and Creativity and Wellbeing Week for LAH. In 2023-2024 my team supported the delivery of the Creative Health City policy programme exploring the radical potential of London as a Creative Health City with partners the GLA and ACE. This culminated in an in-depth report exploring the breadth, depth and scale of London’s Creative Health sector. In 2025 my team supported the delivery of a Creative Health strategy for St George’s Health and Wellbeing Hub, supported the NEL ICB CH associate and delivered CH summer school for the sector at the Royal Albert Hall.
