Best practice in creative health: co-creating a framework with practising artists

• Project title: Best practice in creative health: co-creating a framework with practising artists
• Faculty: Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
• School: Wolfson Institute of Population Health; School of Economics and Finance
• External partners: Poplar Union
• Formats: Workshops; networking events; resources
• Key themes: Creative health; community arts; participatory research

Please could you give us an overview of your project?

In the spring of 2024, supported by a Participatory Research Fund Grant from the CPE, our group of researchers met with nine artists to share and discuss their creative health practice. Creative Health encompasses a wide range of arts practices which benefit health, mental health and wellbeing by supporting both prevention and treatment. However, it should not be assumed that all arts engagement is creative health. We wanted to discover the “key ingredients” of creative health that make arts activities supportive of the health and wellbeing of participants.

This project was informed by our long-standing collaborations within the “East-London Arts Based Social Prescribing Network”, which we established in 2022 thanks to an initial grant by “Network: the QMUL Centre for the Creative and Cultural Economy”. We organised networking events attended by East London artists and arts organisations working in creative health, as well as some healthcare professionals, and representatives of the Arts Council and of the National Centre for Creative Health. The networking events provided a precious opportunity to explore the challenges faced by arts organisations in delivering creative health and to discuss possible areas of research.

This project was inspired by knowledge we garnered during our networking events. There was recognition that many artists practising in creative health know by experience what works and what does not, what the challenges are and how to overcome them. At the same time, it was felt that these skills and experiences should be examined and articulated more explicitly, including for providing a framework to train the practitioners of the future.

Please could you tell us about any external partners you worked with on this project?

In the project, we worked with nine artists, most of whom were recruited through our partner organisation, Poplar Union. Poplar Union is an East London arts and community space that hosts, among others, a range of creative health activities. They therefore had easy access to artists working in community arts and creative health, and they linked our research team with potential participants. Their input was essential to help us recruit a diverse group in terms of ethnicity, age and gender.

Working with Poplar Union was a logical consequence of our previous collaborations. They were regular attendees at our Networking Meetings, and we had already collaborated on other research projects. They were very interested in the scope of this research, as they recognised that a lack of commonly agreed guidelines for practising artists is a weakness of the creative health sector. They hoped that the project would help identify recommendations for practice that could also be used to train the next generation of creative health professionals. They also realised, during the project, that artists value shared spaces where to discuss their practice and its challenges. This has resulted in a follow-up project, to which I will provide research consultation, which will focus on investigating risks and challenges faced by artists working in creative health, and elements of practice which mitigate for these. It will be led by Poplar Union, and has been funded by the National Lottery.

Please could you tell us more about any specific events you delivered as part of your project?

The nine artists and the research team met for four workshops, each lasting for two hours, with a 15-minute tea and coffee break in the middle. In each session, two artists took it in turn to lead a creative activity workshop that was drawn from their practice. In the understanding that practising artists carry a lot of knowledge by experience, we thought it was important that they discuss the “key ingredients” of creative health while engaging with their practice, rather than in more abstract terms.

The conversations unfolding during the four workshops were audio-recorded, with the permission of participating artists and the Queen Mary University of London Research Ethics Committee (ethical approval Ref: QME24.0384). Conversations started while making art, and continued into the second half of the workshops, which was dedicated to a discussion of the key ingredients of creative health. We then transcribed the recordings and analysed them using thematic analysis.

In line with participatory research practice, it was important that the artists were reimbursed for their time participating in the workshops. This was enabled through the Participatory Research Fund grant, which offered each artist a payment of £125 for each 2-hour workshop. The participating artists voiced multiple times how the sessions had been an enriching experience for their own practice. By discussing the key ingredients of their creative health approach, they clarified for themselves what are the essential elements that make their practice supportive of participants’ health and wellbeing. They also found the workshop space useful as a form of peer learning and peer support.

As one of the participating artists says: “The Key Ingredients project was one of those rare occasions when artists and academics had the time to unpack and explore the complexities of running arts activities in social settings. It highlighted the professional isolation that artists experience in their practice and the need for similar support and opportunities. Furthermore, we agreed that it would be beneficial to establish a form of supervision to enhance and protect our work”.

What did you do with your findings?

The research identified five key ingredients of creative health:

• Playfulness;
• A Safe Environment;
• Access to Adequate Resources;
• Time for Reflection;
• Care and Support for the Artist Facilitators.

These ingredients capture the nature of the creative health process, where art making fosters “freedom of expression”, which is supported by openness to making mistakes and a non-judgmental atmosphere. This defines creative health as quite different from arts instruction or training contexts.

In order to encourage playfulness, artists collaborate with participants to co-create a safe environment, which ensures mutual trust, empathy and cultural sensitivity. By building times for reflection into the sessions, the process of mutual knowledge sharing is enhanced.

Perhaps it may seem obvious that any arts making requires access to adequate resources, but we also found two important factors that may be more surprising. The first one is that providing food seems to instil an instinctive sense of being cared for, and therefore accelerates a sense of safety and wellbeing. The second factor is the importance of consistent, long-term provision, which is a challenge due to short term and inconsistent funding. As with many other health interventions, the benefits of creative health are dependent on long term access. Take the example of a healthy diet, for instance, or of regular exercise. These are important factors to promote health and prevent ill-health, but just like creative health, they require a long-term commitment.

Our final ingredient – care and support for the artist facilitators – is perhaps the most unexpected of our findings, and the least discussed in the academic literature. But it speaks of the highly skilled and challenging role that creative health artists adopt; their practice is enhanced through collaborations, peer support and peer supervision, including sharing best practice and finding solutions to common challenges.

Please could you tell us more about the impact this project has gone on to have, and where you hope it might go next?

One of the participating artists, Pierre Bureau, from Mindful Photo Lab, used the framework of the five key ingredients to develop projects in the community in various East London settings, including with children, stroke survivors, people recovering from addiction, and Muslim women. This speaks to the wide applicability of the framework. Pierre says: “The key ingredients framework gave direction to the workshops and connected our work with research. It opened new doors”.

The projects and the framework were presented at the East London Festival of Creative Health, curated by Pierre, which took place in May 2026 at the Four Corners Gallery in Bethnal Green. The festival exhibition was organised so that outputs from each creative project illustrated one of the five key ingredients of the framework. The exhibition was also an opportunity to launch the book Creative Health: In Practice, edited by Pierre Bureau. The first chapter of the book, which I wrote, illustrates the framework; other chapters are written by practising artists and discuss aspects of creative health practice, including through the experience of the projects featured in the exhibition. 100 copies of the book were distributed to practising artists and members of the public visiting the exhibition. The book will be further publicised through creative health networks and is available for purchase.

Participating artists have taken the framework into their own work. One of them says: “The Key Ingredients Project has become one of the elements that now underpins my work. The project made me think and put a name to what it is that is important to me when engaging with participants. I now include it in all my training presentations and encourage other facilitators and professionals to think about their own key ingredients”.

I have personally spoken about the framework in presentations about Creative Health, for example in the public lecture I gave for the Academic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit at University College Dublin. We will use the framework in a forthcoming project in collaboration with Poplar Union. We are also looking for further opportunities to give the framework more visibility, including through links at the Arts Council and at London Arts and Health.

With thanks to the research team:

Professor Francesca Cornaglia (QMUL), Dr Vivian Vigliotti (external collaborator), Dr Hannah Lewis (QMUL), and former students of MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health (QMUL): Yumeng Wang, Tiantian Fu, Zimeng Zhang and Lakhvinder Banga.

SDGs supported: 

• SDG 3: Good health and well-being
• SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth
• SDG 17: Partnerships for the goals

Queen Mary University of London is committed to driving action for the Sustainable Development Goals through our research, education, and engagement. Find out more about the SDGs at Queen Mary University of London.