GM i-THRIVE Arts, Culture and Mental Health programme

THRIVE is the national transformation of child and family services. The Greater Manchester Arts, Culture and Mental Health Programme is part of GM i-THRIVE, and the only THRIVE team nationally with an arts and cultural programme.

Full Implementation Story: http://implementingthrive.org/greater-manchester-i-thrive-arts-culture-and-mental-health-programme/

‘Arts and culture’ covers a vast range of options; from participating in music, dance, drama, drawing, and can mean active participation, or engaging as an observer, such as at a gallery or concert.

Evidence highlights the health and wellbeing benefits of participating in or engaging with arts and cultural activities. Such activities have been shown to help reduce the negative impacts of stress, keep us well, support healthy behaviours, and promote psychological processes such as reflection and expression. In addition, cultural engagement is beneficial in attachment and bonding, behavioural activation, and can be useful in addressing traumas.

Children and Young People (CYP) and the Arts:

There is strong evidence that music and reading supports speech and language development in infants, and arts engagement is linked to school readiness, a key indicator of long-term outcome. A range of promising findings suggests that the effects of arts and cultural engagement are beneficial for wellbeing, skills acquisition, and connecting people to each other and communities. Young people experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, mental health difficulties reported an increase in confidence and self-esteem after attending arts and cultural activities at Hampshire CAMHS. Other researchers have similarly identified benefits in cognitive development, school readiness, confidence and self-esteem, and peer relationships.

Why develop an Arts, Culture and Mental Health Programme?

Greater Manchester (GM) are committed to implementing the THRIVE Framework for system change (Wolpert et al., 2019) across the whole system which includes NHS, Local Authority, Voluntary, Community, Social Enterprise (VCSE), and Education Settings. Part of implementing THRIVE is broadening the mental health offer. In GM, the importance of arts and cultural activities in improving mental health and well-being of all is recognised in the Population Health Plan. In 2018 the GM i-THRIVE team commissioned an arts and culture programme lead to support the embedding of arts and cultural options to improve mental health outcomes for children and young people.

The programme is involved in activities that aim to broaden the offer and demonstrate the value and practicalities of arts provision for mental health. Programme activities fall into four broad areas; implementing arts-led options, fostering cross-sector collaboration; evaluating, and training.

For further detail on each of these visit our Implementation Story and our website, where further examples of cultural engagement for wellbeing can be found.