An Arts and Health Creative Prescribing Discovery Programme has delivered promising results in Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion.

Social prescribing services focus on helping patients with health and social challenges who might feel isolated and require non-clinical support. Running from July 2022 to March 2024, the programme aimed at creating a nurturing environment for the growth of arts on prescription. Over 866 people took part, including patients, people from communities and healthcare staff and 18 artists.

Activities ranged from artists working ‘in residence’ within healthcare teams and Creative Prescribing Cafes which served as hubs for discussion and engagement.

The programme, funded by the Arts Council of Wales, Hywel Dda University Health Board and Tywi Taf Cluster funding was led by Hywel Dda’s Arts and Health team in partnership with Hywel Dda’s Public Health Team, Public Health Wales, the Social Prescribing Community of Practice, Health Education Improvement Wales, Span Arts, People Speak Up, Arts4wellbeing, Haul, Arts Care Gofal Celf and Wales Arts Health and Wellbeing Network.

Frank Farrer from Pembrokeshire FRAME spoke about the impact the programme had on addressing mental health challenges: “We’re looking at people that may be having issues with something that’s been neglected for a long time across the whole of the UK, like mental health issues - even people just feeling really low and depressed, anxious about just stepping outside the doorstep.

“Bringing the arts in, teaching the little things or sitting down like we've done today, have fun cutting things out, sticking on pieces of paper. It brings together people who might not necessarily spoken to each other for a while or have never met anybody."

Creative prescribing
Arts and Health Creative Prescribing has shown promising results across Hywel Dda University Health Board. (Hywel Dda UHB)

Di Ford, an artist from Span Arts, described the transformative effect of participation, noting, “By the end of it, it's like they have a sense of empowerment or achievement that they've created something, it builds confidence, and it can build self-esteem and things as well."

According to an independent evaluation, health professionals noted an increased understanding of the benefits of arts, with 100 per cent of junior doctors attending training events reporting an increase in their knowledge of the evidence supporting arts in health.

Based on insights within the report, the Health Board has outlined four crucial recommendations: to foster cross-sector collaboration across the health board, to develop a health-board-wide pilot arts referral programme, to explore and overcome barriers to effective data capture, and to secure funding for larger-scale research and evaluation activities.