Given my job running a funding programme, I am obviously biased but it seems to me that the attitude of senior leaders in the health sector is becoming ever more persuaded of the benefits of creativity to people with physical and mental health problems. This is based on pioneering work in hospitals and the community for at least the last fifty years. There is an ever-growing body of academic research such as the major SHAPER programme at King’s College London, along with multiple studies from Professor Daisy Fancourt, among others. At the recent SouthBank Centre event on young people, creativity and mental health we heard from people running enormous NHS organisations about their enthusiasm for creativity. The National Centre for Creative Health last year completed a five-year review of work in this area.
So with this weight of evidence and good will, why I am I so concerned?
There is no systematic study of the resources going into arts and health. There are lots of definitional problems and it would doubtless cost an awful lot of money to monitor realistically. So what I am about to write is highly impressionistic and subjective.
The pressures on health funders, both statutory and charitable, seem to me to be forcing a retrenchment away from all non-clinical funding, including for the arts. I notice that the Mental Health Trust for Sussex is axing a long-standing arts post in the face a large debt this financial year. Stand-still funding is the best that most arts organisations can hope for. Take the excellent Start in Salford which has been supported generously for decades by its health authority – but the value has declined due to inflation over many years.
The NHS is a devolved function and is in crisis in all four home nations. The partnership between the Arts Council Wales and the NHS in Wales has widely been seen as a model. However in Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, with the largest arts team, the decision was taken to defund the work. In Edinburgh and Lothian Health Board, all funding for the voluntary sector is ending due to financial pressures. The area is lucky in having the excellent separate fund, Tonic Arts, but that will now be under much greater pressure.
Other NHS charities such as the Maudsley Charity and the Guys and St Thomas’ Charity have either radically reduced or ended their previous generous support for the arts. I completely respect the right of the leadership of these independent charities to decide their priorities but simply point out that in aggregate this contributes to an overall reduction of support by health funders.
And in many places, health funders have never supported the arts and are certainly not going to start now without national political leadership. All this leads to greater pressures on arts funders at a time when we have never felt more in demand.
There are rare hopeful examples of new funding. Space2 in Leeds has been effective in raising funds from Public Health (a very limited source) and work is thriving in the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, helped by hosting a specialist arts post. Hospital Rooms has developed a model of matched funding from Mental Health Trusts to bring in talented artists to transform psychiatric environments with patients and staff. There have also been some examples of new ‘infrastructure roles’ usually created with very small contributions from multiple funders stitched together. We will have to wait to see if they will have an impact on the extremely small amounts of health funding that are currently going into funding arts activities with patients.
Even so, the overall impression I have is of arts and health organisations facing ever increasing financial pressures and making even more demands on arts funders which are under huge pressure themselves. Other people working in the sector appear to share my worries.
The annual budget across the UK for the NHS is roughly £220 billion. I don’t know how much of that gets spent on creative opportunities for patients. No one does. But let’s suppose it is £22 million. That would be one ‘basis point’ or one ten thousandth of the total.
I would be very interested in your thoughts on these personal reflections. What is the trend overall? Given the absence of clear overall funding data, have I misinterpreted a small number of examples? Hopefully I have. If not, what can we collectively do about it?
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