In September and October last year, we conducted a survey of the creative health sector across the UK and Ireland. Funded by Arts Council England, the survey was a partnership between the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance, the Wales Arts, Health & Wellbeing Network, Arts, Culture, & Wellbeing Scotland, Arts Care (Northern Ireland), the Northern Ireland Creative Health Network, Réalta, and London Arts and Health.
We’re so grateful to the 180 of you who responded across the UK and Ireland. We’ve started to analyse the results, and the first batch of responses we’ve looked at all concern equity in one way or another. You can see these early results here. We’ve looked at the demographics of our respondents, and questions about health inequalities and working with people who identify with the protected characteristics. The most striking results so far, however, have been the responses to the following question:
“Do you feel the current political landscape is affecting your work? This could be about health, culture, or any other areas.”
Many of the responses to this question related to things we would normally, if depressingly, expect to hear: cuts in arts funding, cuts in health funding, the upheaval of structural reforms in the NHS, and so on. What is new, to my ears, is an alarming set of concerns about far-right movements, hostile environments, and racism affecting communities and participants. This is linked in the responses with increased psychosocial stress, anxiety, and exhaustion among practitioners; some note they have taken breaks from work due to the politically charged environment. Others note that marginalised groups (e.g., LGBTQ+, migrants, Disabled people) are facing additional barriers.
We’ve been living with political problems like austerity for many years; but this political environment is relatively new. The Runnymede Trust has recently published A hostile environment: language, race, surveillance and the media – the second of two reports analysing the language used in parliamentary and media debates. Between 2019 and 2024, ‘illegal’ remains the number one association for ‘immigrants’ and has moved up from fourth to second most strongly associated term for ‘migrant’ in the news data. The Trust says that the report “shows how the UK government and media are complicit in enabling racist violence”.
At CHWA our Theory of Change commits us to valuing equity, and to building a representative membership, empowered to work towards a more just and equitable society. These are values shared across our sister organisations in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Ireland. Together, we want to be able to support our organisations and our members both to cope with and to challenge this new reality.
We want to open up spaces for our members to discuss how this is coming up in your work and how you are approaching dealing with it – we’re not promising answers, but we know that as well as questions and fears there is excellent practice already out there; and we have a lot to learn from colleagues around the country.
As a collective, our networks will be convening a number of events over the next year focused in different ways on addressing these questions, including during Creativity & Wellbeing Week (16-21 May), Healing Arts Scotland (16-22 June), which coincides with Refugee Festival Scotland as well as Refugee Week; and at the CHWA conference this October. CHWA is also planning a partnership event with Counterpoints Arts this spring, as a prequel to Refugee Week. The theme of Creativity & Wellbeing Week this year is #criticalhope, an idea championed by Paulo Freire, as an active, necessary, and realistic, rather than passive or naive, stance against oppression and despair.
More details about all these events will be announced soon.
CHWA has started by working with our Board to build a process to allow us to consider and address global political issues in the ways we feel are most relevant and helpful for our membership. This will guide our approach to public statements but perhaps more importantly to concrete actions that support our members.
In the meantime we are sharing just a few links below to work already happening in creative health; this is not meant to be comprehensive, but we hope it provides some inspiration and a sense of connection.
We’re really interested in hearing from you if your practice engages directly with migration, antiracism or tackling prejudice in any way; the more we can share good practice through this website and our bulletin and social media the more we support each other to move forward with hope.
For inspiration…
Artists Represent Recovery Network (ARRN)
Advocates for Representation in Creative Health (ARCH)
Anti-Racist Action in Arts & Wellbeing Services (Flourishing Lives)
Awen Trust, Bridgend, Wales - Global Cafés (in the interests of safeguarding the cafés are invite-only)
Creative Mental Health & Global Majority Communities (event – 19 Mar)
Creatively Minded and Refugees - The Baring Foundation
Creatively Minded and Ethnically Diverse - The Baring Foundation
darts / Maya Artist Traineeship programme
Doing The Right Thing (creative writing with Black Wales based NHS workers)
Emergence: Creative Workshops Celebrating Queer Voices and Community Connection - SPAN Arts
Guidance from the Myriad programme for creative health practitioners working in a mental health context with global majority communities
Mental Health Foundation Perthyn Wales
Queercircle – including the recent Let’s Create Change report
NCVO support for charities “in times of division and racial hatred”
WAHWN Stepping In programme (diversifying the arts and health practitioner workforce)
Sub Sahara Advisory Panel, Wales
How You Dey Exploring Identity and Expression Through Art | Wales Arts Health & Well-being Network
Singing Walks - One World Choir, Wales working to support the mental health and wellbeing of refugees and asylum seekers
Span Arts We Move (global majority families)
Welsh Government Community Cohesion Principles for Practitioners