The power of cultural social prescribing for health

Culture can have a significant impact on people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing. At the GLA, we're testing what happens when we embed creative health champions in the NHS. We partnered with the South East London Integrated Care System to create a role dedicated to mapping the potential and opportunities for creative health.

Flora Faith-Kelly started as the first South East London Creative Health Lead in November 2023. As part of this, she is working closely with local social prescribers, who connect Londoners with activities that can improve their health and wellbeing. Now a few months into the role, she shares what she’s finding out and the huge potential of creative health to improve lives of Londoners.

Dr. Catherine Mbema, Director of Public Health at Lewisham Council, said:
“With Lewisham being the London Borough of Culture in 2022, it was natural that we’d be particularly interested in understanding and promoting the role that culture can play in influencing health and wellbeing. Indeed, in the recent Annual Public Health Report for Lewisham we can recognised the existing evidence that shows the positive effects that culture play in preventing or treating mental and physical ill-health. We’re excited to have Flora in this new role which will help us to understand and expand opportunities for creative healthcare and social prescribing to improve the lives of residents in the borough.”

Flora: I'm completing an audit of the existing creative health sector across the six south east boroughs. Following this, I'll work in collaboration with local creative health networks to design a pilot project aiming to reduce health inequalities.

I'm talking both to those delivering creative health programmes in the arts and voluntary sectors, and those within the healthcare settings and support networks. In these conversations I work to understand existing links across sectors, explore the barriers to further collaboration, share success stories and understand hopes for the development of creative health policy.

The key is building trust and collaborative relationships across sectors, to highlight the positive potential of creative health both in the Integrated Care Board and in communities across South East London.

Flora:

• The ability to promote a personalised approach to healthcare: it is a tool to prevent ill health, encouraging self-management or even improving wellbeing for people, including those living with long-term health conditions. There is so much evidence of this in South East London, including: Breathe’s Melodies for Mum’s programme, Raw Material’s Creative Health & Wellbeing Programme and Entelechy’s Ambient Jam. Creative health activities allow individuals to choose a highly personal form of creative expression as a means of wellbeing management whilst also building community and providing connection. Exploring the use of Personal Health Budgets for creative outlets, alongside the integration of creative health into Universal Care Plans and Social Prescribing, will allow for improved access to creativity and therefore greater ability for communities to stay well.
• Creative health is an enabler to amplify patient experience and voice: creative activities can make visible and uplift lived experience. In turn, this improves personalised care routes and leads to more inclusive conversations in healthcare. For example, Creating Ground’s Theatre in Action project allows migrant women to explore issues around healthcare access in a way that has tangible impact, seeing the theatre group performing for key stakeholders of the Integrated Care Board. By harnessing creative methods of co-production and evaluation, healthcare services can better understand the experiences of those who may have traditionally gone unheard. This feels key to the reduction of health inequalities in South East London.

Flora: Participating in collaborative creativity or engaging individually in a creative activity allows for creative expression which we know has a positive impact on health thanks to the All Party Parliamentary Group’s recent Creative Health Review. Social Prescribers support people who find themselves feeling isolated, stressed or struggling with low mood or lack of purpose, to find opportunities or tools for improving wellbeing based on interests and needs.  Many Londoners working with social prescribers may have never considered themselves to be “creative,” “artistic” or interested in “culture” before or may not have engaged in a creative activity for a long time. By being encouraged to give a new creative pursuit a go, in a supportive environment can build confidence, combat social isolation, provide purpose and encourage upskilling.

Successful cultural social prescribing is currently happening at Sydenham Gardens where those referred can take part in gardening sessions, arts and crafts or dance and become part of a community of creative gardeners, often in groups specific to their needs e,g. Sow & Grow group for those living with dementia or the M.U.D group for 18-25 year olds. Similarly, social prescribers are referring to Dulwich Picture Gallery’s programme of creative wellbeing activities at Tessa Jowell Health Centre with success, allowing patients to engage in creativity within a familiar community healthcare setting. These social prescribing pathways can ideally exist between social prescribers and any voluntary or arts-based organisation delivering creative health activities so there is huge opportunity to encourage creativity across South East London.

Flora: It feels important to support social prescribers in SEL to have the confidence to suggest cultural or creative options as part of their conversations with clients. There are two key needs to achieve this:

1. Ensuring social prescribers understand the value of cultural social prescribing themselves. We are exploring the following things: 

• supporting them to experience the cultural activities for themselves, so they can better understand what they bring individuals
• encouraging attendance at cultural social prescribing training sessions (currently being delivered across SEL by Performing Medicine)
• integrating of cultural social prescribing into social prescribers’ initial training

2. Ensuring social prescribers know what creative programmes and activities are being offered across South East London by arts and voluntary sector partners. This also means supporting organisations delivering these programmes to connect to their local health networks, to create accessible pathways for referral.

The South East London ICS Creative Health programme has been made possible with financial support from the Greater London Authority; the South East London Integrated Care Board; the London Councils of Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark; and in-kind support from Bexley and Bromley Councils.

Flora’s role sits alongside similar positions managed by the National Centre for Creative Health and funded by Arts Council England, which includes a Creative Health Associate for London. There is an ambition to create Creative Health Lead roles in each of London’s Intergrated Care Systems.

Find out more about our creative health programmes to support developments across all of London, and our work to build London Creative Health City.

^{Photo credit: collaborative mandala making at Rewire: a young persons' mental health summit, an event at Stanley Arts in February 2024.}