The team at Liverpool: Professor Josie Billington, Professor Katia Balabanova, Dr Joanne Worsley, Dr Tonya Anisimovich, Dr Megan Watkins and Melissa Chapple wanted to understand how restricted access to arts and cultural activities was impacting how we felt. To do this, they created the COVID-19 CARE project (Culture and the Arts, from Restriction to Enhancement: Protecting Mental Health in the Liverpool City Region).
Liverpool City Region (LCR) has some of the poorest mental health outcomes in the country, as well as one of the richest concentrations of culture in the UK. This has resulted in the region developing a pioneering history of harnessing arts for mental health care.
This study examined not only the mental health impact of restricted access to arts and cultural activities, but also the successes and challenges of alternative modes of provision. Conducted in three waves at approximately three-monthly intervals between October 2020 and July 2021, the team collected data on experiences of arts/cultural organisations and their beneficiaries during full lockdown, when restrictions were first lifted, and after full restrictions easing.
They found that, as one of LCR’s most important economic and social assets, the arts and culture sector can play a major role in improving mental health outcomes across the city region, if properly integrated into public health strategy.
What did the study find?
There was a highly collaborative and imaginative response from the sector
Arts and cultural organisations in LCR responded rapidly and creatively to the pandemic, offering online programmes as a lifeline for vulnerable and isolated people and innovating their own services.
New partnerships were created
Arts/cultural organisations have been most effective in reaching vulnerable, isolated and disadvantaged populations at risk of mental health issues when they have worked in close collaboration with social and mental health care providers.
Hybrid provision was vital
While some are keen to return to in-person events, the sense of risk is strong for others. Online provision remains vital for those with health conditions or vulnerable family members. Arts/cultural organisations are exploring creative means of integrating online and in-person provisions.
There was a clear benefit to wellbeing of regular arts/cultural engagement
Those who engaged in arts and culture frequently during lockdown had significantly higher wellbeing scores than those who engaged in arts and culture ‘never’ or ‘rarely’.
Chart to show how often people took part in arts and cultural activities during full Covid-19 lockdown.
Digital literacy and access remain an issue
While audiences appreciate the option of alternative provision, barriers to online inclusion (cost, accessibility) are exacerbating a growing digital divide. Arts/cultural organisations need expert support on platforms and products, safeguarding procedures, effective staff training.
Recommendations
The COVID-19 Care team have put forward a number of recommendations they believe will help build upon their findings:
Support sustainable partnerships between health and arts providers
Building on successful cross-sectoral cooperation between arts and cultural organisations and regional health and social care providers will facilitate wider provision and maximise the value and reach of these services, as well as producing new opportunities for training care staff to deliver interventions.
Co-ordinate local initiatives
Arts and cultural organisations need to co-ordinate services and share best practice, pulling together the talents, experience and good will of local initiatives in meeting essential needs so that they can be scaled up and targeted more efficiently. The team are currently co-creating with their arts and health partners a digital directory of best practice in arts in mental health in the Liverpool City Region, Liverpool Art of Care (LivCARE), for release in Summer 2022.
Maintain alternative/hybrid provision of arts and cultural activity
Hybrid offerings are critical both for rebuilding capacity in the creative industries, and for the mental health of the region’s population, enabling inclusive accessibility for vulnerable people alongside in-person events that boost community connectedness.
Train all stakeholders in digital knowhow
There is an urgent need to evaluate which online arts and cultural services are working, why and for whom they are working, and to provide skilling-up of both workforce and beneficiaries. This is just as essential as the provision of equipment and internet access.
The COVID-19 CARE project also published a policy brief - ‘The Mental Health Impact of Restricted Access to Arts and Culture’ (April 2021), which was published in Heseltine Institute for Public Policy’s Covid-19 series, ‘Responding to Covid-19 in the Liverpool City Region’
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