A lifeline

A growing body of research has shown that participation in arts and cultural activity can support mental health and wellbeing (e.g., Daykin et al., 2018; Fancourt & Finn, 2019; Fancourt & Steptoe, 2018). As we find ourselves in another national lockdown, it has perhaps never been more important to gain insight into how restricted access to arts and culture, and new ways of providing access to these activities, is affecting mental health.

To understand the impact of COVID-19 on arts and cultural provision in the Liverpool City Region (LCR), and on the mental health of those whom arts and cultural organisations serve, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with representatives from the full range of arts and cultural providers (museums, theatres, galleries, concert halls, community and participatory arts organisations). Many of the organisations interviewed serve vulnerable and isolated populations who are experiencing or at risk of mental health issues, either in collaboration with healthcare providers or via volunteers. Specifically, we have captured data on:

• understandings of the populations affected by restricted access to arts and cultural provision;
• the innovative measures our arts partners have taken to provide alternative means of access;
• how these alternatives have been communicated; and
• how this process has led to reflection by arts providers on their core values and role within LCR.

In the LCR, the response has been creative and highly collaborative. The digital arena has come to the fore with arts organisations creating new programmes or adapting existing work to reach their usual as well as new audiences. Online provision has been essential in addressing social isolation and enhancing psychological wellbeing during lockdown, and many beneficiaries have referred to this alternative provision as ‘a lifeline’.  

The flexibility of online provision means that arts providers are reaching people who have been unable to attend activities in person (for reasons of health, mobility, location or caring responsibilities), and bringing people together across the city, the country and even globally. They are also reaching people more frequently than face-to-face provision allows, holding activities fortnightly rather than monthly, twice weekly rather than weekly. Carers have benefitted particularly from extended networks and new peer support.

While digital offerings have flourished, arts organisations have also deployed offline approaches such as creativity and activity packs for people in prisons and the homeless. New and existing partnerships with health and social care services have been especially important in ensuring that non-digital provision is meeting people who need it (in care homes and inpatient mental health units for example). Indeed, arts organisations have been most effective in reaching vulnerable, isolated and disadvantaged populations when they have worked in close collaboration with social and health care providers, who have frequently provided the online platform, while their networks have facilitated referral to online modes of provision or to telephone contact as an alternative. The formation of new partnerships between arts and care providers, as well as the rapid pivot to online working, has galvanised imaginative solutions and skilled up the workforce and beneficiaries.

For all these successes, however, arts organisations have also encountered a number of challenges.  They are all too aware that certain populations have remained relatively out of reach (for example, the elderly, asylum seekers, street-based sex workers) due to lack of access to internet facilities or unfamiliarity with devices. The impact of digital exclusion is two-way: potential beneficiaries do not know what is available; arts organisations cannot be sure how many usual beneficiaries are accessing online services. In addition to training staff and facilitators to work digitally, and support participants to engage digitally, there is also a need to ensure safeguarding in digital spaces. All in all, arts and cultural organisations are acutely conscious of an urgent need to review ‘what is working’ for the populations they serve, and some have already begun evaluation of their online service.

The current crisis has clearly been an exhilarating and rewarding, yet difficult journey for LCR arts and cultural providers. Many have gone the extra mile, providing unofficial help where usual social care services have been interrupted: some have found that, for all their efforts, certain activities simply cannot be satisfactorily reproduced online. What is not in doubt is the renewed sense among our partners in both arts and health of the immense value of the arts to the LCR community and the will to see them thrive.

Dr Joanne Worsley, Research Associate