Health Check

With the NHS turning 75 – a milestone that has set the UK talking once again about the merits of this national institution – it’s as good a time as any to think about how the arts and healthcare overlap, and how they might overlap yet more.

The NHS is struggling – still fighting back after Covid, while strike action drags on and redoubles. But it’s at this very time that the NHS has rolled out new, innovative models for sharing arts and other activities with patients, through social prescribing and community health groups. Weaving activities into the fabric of community care is a very positive way of sharing their benefits. It’s a holistic, whole-life model where healthcare’s role isn’t limited to medication and surgery. It’s about going beyond and connecting on different levels. And it widens awareness and participation. I’ve seen how people who would not seek out activities for themselves will take part if it is recommended or led by healthcare providers they trust.

Placing wellbeing at the centre of care has real scope. How might it grow still more? One area is staff support. I’m hearing more and more how many NHS staff have emerged from the pandemic not only exhausted but traumatised by what happened. Using creative therapy with staff could help – particularly ideas which require little time, for the time-poor.

Creative activity ideas could also be available in waiting areas. As patients anxiously wait for appointments, an activity like colouring could relax them more than staring at a screen.

Art and craft could enhance the design of many healthcare spaces as well. So many hospitals in particular look so clinical, bare apart from signs, with harsh lighting. More visual stimuli could make them feel more familiar and welcoming, and give more to focus on – colourful photographs, paintings or word art. These need only be simple and low-cost – or they could be top contemporary art, as provided by the charity Paintings In Hospitals. Either would work.

Another possibility is more use of the arts to express the trauma of illness itself. Encounters with the NHS may turn out reassuring and helpful, but there’s usually an element of trauma in any experience of ill health – pain, fear, frustrations. Initiatives do exist focusing on this specific area, like art therapy or art for wellbeing for peope undergoing cancer treatment – but there’s space for these to expand more widely, and to use different approaches – one-to-one or group, but also activity ideas for people to take home and reflect on and use in their own time.

Do you have ideas, responses or experiences to share on arts and healthcare? Just go to Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.