London Arts and Health is proud to share this new report, produced in partnership with the SEL Creative Health Manager, Flora Faith-Kelly, SEL ICB partners, Lewisham Council and the South East London Creative Health Network, as part of our ongoing commitment to support the embedding of creative health across the health system.
The Adopting Creative Health in Lewisham Neighbourhoods: Utilising the Creative Health Impact Framework Report provides an important interim analysis of how creative health can be embedded within neighbourhood working via Health Equity Teams and Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs) in Lewisham. It assesses the value of the Creative Health Impact Framework as both a practical planning & evaluation tool and a bridge between community practice and health system priorities.
What it demonstrates clearly is that creative health is present across neighbourhood working in Lewisham – through culturally grounded, community-led interventions that build trust, engagement and relevance in ways that traditional clinical approaches often cannot. From community gardening programmes, creative co-design workshops in GP surgeries and barber shop outreach sessions, creative approaches are not “add-on” or “nice to have” but rather are a crucial mechanism for reaching communities and addressing health inequalities, as we are seeing with cardiovascular disease prevention in the borough of Lewisham.
The report highlights that our challenge is not whether creative health is effective but how it is understood, evidenced and communicated consistently across sectors in order to sustain and resource meaningful community-based activities and partnerships. The Creative Health Impact Framework has begun to address this in South East London, supporting a relational approach to evaluation that can build a shared language using logic models, an outcomes guide and case study template, communicating impact in ways that can inform funding & partnership working. This is a real opportunity to embed creative health as a core component of neighbourhood delivery rather than a peripheral offer as this runs alongside creative health training for Integrated Neighbourhood Teams and the launch of creative health neighbourhood grants in Lewisham, which will also utilise the Impact Framework as evaluation
This is a timely report setting out the advantage of embedding creative health within neighbourhood approaches within the health system, the benefits of meaningfully considering how we can best tell stories of impact for creative health and how we can scale what works across South East London and beyond. This work is funded by the South East London Creative Health Network and delivered as a partnership between SEL ICB, Lewisham Council and London Arts and Health.
This interim report will be followed by a final evaluation in 2027, examining outcomes and impact across the full programme.