Arts & Health - the benefits

Creative Alternatives is Sefton’s cutting-edge response to the growing recognition that health is more than measurements and targets. Healthy human beings are creative beings. At Creative Alternatives we believe in a holistic approach to health care – and we believe that rekindled meaning, creativity and imagination play a central role in every patient’s journey towards health.

How does Creative Alternatives help?

• It increases people's confidence and self-esteem
• It helps developing social skills
• It helps people build new friendships
• It boosts motivation and energy levels
• It offers time out from the normal routine
• It gives people a sense of achievement
• It enables people to move on to further education, volunteering and employment

What’s the evidence for impact?

Within the arts community it has been widely accepted that arts practice induces change on political, social, and even more so on individual levels. We know that artistic activity has positive, transformative effects – and in more recent years there have been more systematic and controlled studies of these effects.

For a review of the medical literature on arts and health, Dr Rosalia Lelchuk Staricoff’s (2004) Arts in health: a review of the medical literature offers a good starting point. Arts Council England also maintains a live document, drawing together evidence on the impact of the arts in education, health, criminal justice and regeneration. The latest report on the benefits of participation in the arts from the Voluntary Arts Network can now be found online:www.artsforhealth.org/resources/restoring the balance.pdf

For further research evidence on arts and health projects please see our links section. You can also visit our download section where you can access our own programme reports, giving specific details on how Creative Alternatives benefits people’s health and wellbeing.