Identifying What Is Of Value

The Library of Ideas, a co-produced community project by artists Davis & Jones curated for Bristol’s Junction Three community hub by Willis Newson. Photo Max McClure. 

When it comes to identifying and evidencing what matters about creative health, I have always thought that understanding the mechanisms for change – how and why a programme improves health and wellbeing – is just as important as measuring the actual changes or health outcomes a programme might lead to.  

But Michael Cunliffe’s talk at the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) round table discussion Counting What We Care made me think again. What if understanding and evidencing the mechanisms for change is more important than measuring outcomes?  

Let me explain. There is a truism that says, “unless you measure what you value, you will end up valuing what you measure.” And, as Michael, who is the Creative Health Strategic Manager at Northumberland County Council and the North East and North Cumbria ICB, pointed out, arts and health programmes are often encouraged to measure health outcomes like improvements in wellbeing.  

However, wellbeing is never a static thing. We all have good days and bad. And this is particularly true of anyone living with poor mental health. So, if we measure wellbeing (or anxiety, or loneliness or depression…) at the start and end of a programme, there is no guarantee that any change we see in the scores is representative of how a person feels over a longer period, or whether any change indicated will last beyond the end of a programme.  

Michael suggested that we reframe Creative Health as a skill that can be modelled, learned and practiced, rather than as an activity that is given or prescribed.  

When we look at Creative Health in this way, the important thing is not just whether a project has improved someone’s wellbeing in the short term, but whether someone has learned a new life skill or practice that will better enable them to look after their own health and wellbeing in the long term.  

What matters, therefore, is less about the measurable health outcomes a project might lead to - reduced loneliness, increased wellbeing etc – and more about the skills or mechanisms which enable people to achieve those outcomes. Because these are the experiences, behaviours, and practices that will continue to support them during the good times and the bad long after a project ends.    

If we see Creative Health as a skill, what does that skill involve? What does it look like?  

Is it an attitude, behaviour or practice that enables us to live fully: to be rather than consume; to feel rather than do; to express rather than silence? 

Is it the skill of being able to access meaning, joy, connection, community, curiosity, confidence, and agency?  

Could we call that skill creativity?  

If so, the thing of most value within Creative Health is creativity!  

Which brings me back to the question I started with: How do we identify and evidence what matters?  

How do we identify and evidence whether Creative Health programmes model, teach and enable people to be creative and to apply that skill to support health and wellbeing?  

How do we evidence creativity?  

Because… unless we measure what we value, we will end up valuing what we measure. 

Michael’s talk within the NCCH roundtable Counting What We Care can be accessed here