Creativity, Health and Wellbeing
Welcome to Creativity, Health and Wellbeing. This research theme, led by Dr Stephen Hicks, covers projects focused on the tangible health and social care benefits of the arts and creative practice.
The need for greater research and evidence within this theme is clear, as is the pressure to respond to growing health and social care crises.
Creative Manchester’s place and connections at The University of Manchester and in the city as a whole, such as our ties with the NHS and local social work/care and community health organisations, is enabling outstanding research in several projects.
The Communications and Engagement Coordinator supporting this theme is Kate Geller.
Discover the wide range of projects Creative Manchester is involved in relating to Creativity, Health and Wellbeing.
Music and Dementia
Projects investigating the transformative power of music with Manchester Camerata.
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CARE Lab
Three year project exploring care as a sensory and embodied practice.
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Air Space
An interdisciplinary project highlighting questions about atmosphere and air quality.
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Organisations of Hope
A collaborative, interdisciplinary research project focused on forming a creative health coalition to address health inequalities in Greater Manchester.
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Since the publication of Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing in 2017 there has been a significant development of practice, policy and research around the concept of creative health.
At The University of Manchester we have been exploring the research landscape around creative health and social care, beginning to map research agendas and identifying support for interdisciplinary networking both internally and externally to further develop a framework for creative health and social care research.
In 2022 Creative Manchester was pleased to host the launch of the GM (Greater Manchester) Creative Health Strategy in collaboration with the GM Integrated Care Partnership and GM Person & Community Centred Approaches. Greater Manchester City Region has the ambition to be the first city region in the world to realise the power of creativity, culture and heritage to address health inequities and inequalities.
In 2024 we hosted the Creative Health Research Symposium which brough together those interested in creative health research and its broader intersection with practice and policy.
Key themes addressed during the day included an exploration of the research landscape in creativity, health, social care and wellbeing, creative methods and creative health/care research and inequalities.
Theme Showcase
In 2024, we hosted a night walk around Central Manchester with the team from the Air Space Project.
The event explored walking as a research method for creative practice and allowed participants to examine their relationship with the urban atmosphere at night.