Resource: The Value of Arts & Culture, Peoples & Society (Arts Council England)
This evidence review covers he value of arts & culture within four major areas: economy, health & well-being, society & education.
News
Resource: Using New Metrics to Assess the Role of the Arts in Well-Being (Office of Research & Analysis or the National Endowment for the Arts)
There is implicit consensus that the arts play a positive role in most societies, with good reason. They can have positive social externalities by generating events for social gatherings and creative exchange. They enhance our visual and auditory environments. They are as old as human existence and the most notable works far outlast the lifetimes of their creators. But how can we measure the contribution that the arts make to society and to human well-being?
Resource: Music: a better alternative than pain? (University Hospital of South Manchester)
Information about the effectiveness of music from randomised controlled trials will only ever partially answer questions about whether individual patients should try it. Meanwhile the safety, freedom from side effects, and acceptability of music leads us to conclude that we should be encouraging patients to listen to music to try to alleviate their pain.
Resource: Art & Wellness: The Importance of Arts for Aboriginal Peoples’ Health & Healing (National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health)
How art & culture practices can contribute to the health & healing processes of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Resource: Making and gifting belonging: creative arts and people with learning disabilities. (School of the Environment, University of Dundee)
Through the doing of creative arts, people with learning disabilities can transcend the exclusionary landscape (albeit temporarily) and begin to reimagine and transform understandings of learning disability and difference in society.
Resource: The arts, health and seniors project: A Three Year Exploration of the Relationship between Arts and Health
From 2006-2009, an initiative was developed in Vancouver and
North Vancouver to provide vulnerable and marginalized seniors with community-engaged arts programming and to demonstrate the role that professionally led arts programs can play in the health and well-being of seniors.
Resource: Be Creative Be Well; Arts, wellbeing and local communities: An evaluation (National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health)
This is an important report that describes and evaluates the Be Creative Be Well project and the key role it has played within the integrated, community-led Well London programme.
Resource: Impacts of community events and festivals on rural places (Government of Alberta)
This research provides a literature-review-based overview of community events and festivals. This report also considers the event categories, their importance and the associated impacts on rural communities. The report reviews examples from Canada and other jurisdictions.
Resource: National Arts & Youth Demonstration Project (McGill University)
The objective of the present study is to examine the effectiveness of after-school arts programs in increasing the participation of visible minority and Aboriginal youth in life-enriching programs and to identify the processes by which these programs have a positive impact on their psychosocial functioning.
Resource: Choral singing and psychological wellbeing (Journal of Applied Arts and Health)
A recent systematic review (Clift, Hancox, Staricoff & Whitmore 2008) identified 35 research reports addressing connections between singing, wellbeing and health in non-clinical samples and contexts, published since the early 1960s. The literature is highly diverse theoretically and methodologically, and low levels of cross-citation indicate an academic field in an early stage of development. Nevertheless, a number of important findings have emerged from the more substantial studies undertaken to date.