STIR READERS MIGHT have a sense that taking in arts and culture is good for them. Now, it’s official, with new research out of the U.K. finding that consuming arts and culture benefits people’s health and well-being. It also generates about $144 billion a year worth of improvements in people’s quality of life and higher productivity.
“Culture and Heritage Capital: Monetising the Impact of Culture and Heritage on Health and Wellbeing” is the name of the 2024 report prepared for the British government’s department for culture, media, and sport by Frontier Economics.
The study found that going to an arts event or taking part in a cultural activity, even only occasionally such as every few months, confers an array of “significant” benefits that can include alleviating pain, frailty, depression, and dependence on medication. The findings echo those from a 2019 World Health Organization report, which found that the arts can help people experiencing mental illness; support care for people with acute conditions; help to support people with neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders; assist with the management of noncommunicable diseases; and support end-of-life care.
“It is good to see this kind of research coming out and continues to substantiate what those of us who are artists, performers, musicians, dancers, poets, creatives, and arts-based researchers have been saying all along, that the arts are a place of deep transformation and access our entire beings—mind, body, soul, spirit, so there is a space to foster the visceral imagination,” says Celeste Nazeli Snowber, a dancer, poet, writer, and professor in the faculty of education at Simon Fraser University. “The arts have long been a place of ceremony, ritual, and ultimately a place to bring wellness. This research along with so much more brings it to the public eye and it is great to see going out to wider communities. Particularly, it is great that it is in the U.K., when so many programs connected to the arts have been cut.”
The British research found that engaging in the arts has diverse and tangible effects on health, including supporting cognitive development and protecting against cognitive decline; reducing symptoms of mental illness; lowering pain and stress via the same neurological and physiological pathways activated by medication; diminishing loneliness; and maintaining physical functioning, thereby reducing frailty and age-related physical decline.
“From visiting museums and galleries to participating in choirs and watching theatre performances, these activities enrich our lives in countless ways,” writes Gus O’Donnell in the study’s foreword. “The study highlights how cultural engagement can benefit adults’ general health, how arts activities can improve children’s selfesteem [sic], and how singing in choirs can improve the health of older adults.”
The research consisted of an in-depth literature review encompassing approximately 3,500 abstracts and 160 full papers, focusing on studies that used high-quality, quantitative research methods to investigate causal relationships.
In terms of monetary value, the study found that participating in the arts led to a savings of $1,263 to $2,342 per person per year in terms of visiting their doctor less often and feeling better about their lives, while the benefit to wider society, through health-care costs averted and productivity impact, led to savings of $360 million to $144 billion per year.