Big Issue X Creative Health
To celebrate nearly 15 years of Creativity and Wellbeing Week, London Arts and Health alongside special guest editors Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance and Arts and Homelessness International have curated a very special edition of the Big Issue, celebrating all things Creative Health.
Introduction to the special edition
Today marks the opening of Creativity and Wellbeing Week — nearly 15 years in the making, and more vital than ever. Born from a simple but radical conviction that creativity and health belong together, this free festival from London Arts and Health and the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance exists to shine a light on the grassroots practitioners, freelancers, artists and health and care workers quietly transforming communities across England. This year, as every year, hundreds of events will unfurl across the country: a living map of a sector that refuses to stay on the margins. Our organisations exist collectively to support all things arts, health, culture and wellbeing across England, and alongside Arts & Homelessness International, we are curating this amazing edition of the Big Issue to explore the impact that culture can have on our health and wellbeing.
This issue and our festival is more than a celebration. It’s a showcase, a catalyst, and a launchpad for people doing essential, often invisible work in their local communities.
Creativity is not a luxury. It’s a barometer of collective health. Creative communities are demonstrably healthier communities — and the act of creating itself carries real, measurable benefits for mind and body (you can read more about the ‘measurable’ side of things inDaisy Fancourt’s article for this edition). It can happen anywhere, at any time, by anyone. We hope this issue sparks something in you: a flicker of curiosity, a door left ajar.
The theme of this special edition is critical hope — and we chose it deliberately. Coined by the educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, critical hope is neither wishful thinking nor passive optimism. It is a clear-eyed, justice-oriented commitment to imagining and building a better future, even – especially – in the face of hardship.
That hardship is real. NHS redundancies, chronically unstable funding, and the mounting pressures of political and planetary crisis are reshaping the landscape in which this work is done. We are not looking away from any of that. Inspired by the Marmot Issue from October 2025, our Creative Health edition takes its place in that tradition: rigorous, hopeful, and unafraid. We’re also pleased to partner with Thrive Ldn, who have provided money to commission articles on the theme of climate change and creativity. Candy Zhang’s article about the role of community gardens particularly leans into this theme.
We’re thrilled that David Shrigley – a patron of the National Centre for Creative Health – has designed this edition’s cover. For us, it speaks to finding a way to get at the creativity that’s deep in all of us. Our work is all about unlocking that potential; this means addressing what alienates us from creativity. How can we make sure ‘art’ doesn’t feel like something for other people? Jemilea Wisdom-Baako’s piece for this edition explains how to change who art belongs to; and this same approach is implicit all through this magazine, which celebrates creativity that challenges our preconceptions about who gets to make art and why.
In the homelessness sector, we’ve always known that arts and creativity are positive forces for good – nurturing and building wellbeing, social connections, pride and purpose. The movement has grown from just a handful of recognised projects in the 1990s, to over 500 worldwide (see them mapped at www.artshomelessint.com) – choirs, theatre groups, artists with lived experience, homeless centres and more. We platform some of their incredible work in the pages that follow.
The vast majority of content in the magazine relating to homelessness has been created by people who are or have been homeless – an exciting generation of leaders and artists who illustrate that the homeless sector and the creative industries benefit hugely from having lived experience at the centre. You can also read how creativity is becoming more integrated in policy co-creation using Legislative Theatre and how the capacity of creativity to heal is now becoming more centralised in recovery and trauma support.
In this special edition you’ll read about many different kinds of art-making and creative activities – from choirs to poems, to cooking and gardening. We ran an open call through our three organisations to see who would be able to send in articles and creative work. Thousands of people are helping us do creative things that support our health in libraries, museums, hospitals, community centres, theatres and anywhere else they can find all around the country; but still not enough of us are able to access this. The three membership organisations that have brought this special edition together are part of a whole world of groups who are trying to make this more possible for more people. The government’s new 10-year Plan for the NHS talks about a shift to prevention and tackling health inequalities; two things that creativity and culture are uniquely well placed to tackle. Big cultural institutions like the South Bank Centre and Royal Albert Hall (both with case studies in this edition), or the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester ( hosting the launch of this edition); an All Party Parliamentary Group for Creative Health, co-chaired by Simon Opher MP, interviewed for this edition by Thahmina Begum; the National Centre for Creative Health, which influences policy and opens up health and social care systems to creative practice; the National Academy for Social Prescribing; the LENS lived experience network; the ARCH group who tackle issues of underrepresentation and equity; Creative Lives, who support voluntary groups all around the country; and crucially Arts Council England, who are currently the biggest single funder of this work across England and keep both the creative practitioners and the organisations supporting them going.
In short, if you are a creative freelancer or a small arts organisation trying to help people with their health and wellbeing, you are not alone. This edition is just a glimpse of the huge number of different kinds of organisations and individuals coming together to make change. There is still a way to go until creativity sits at the very heart of our health and social care systems, but there are so many glorious examples in this edition where that change has already happened – we just need to join the dots.
By Anna Woolf, Victoria Hume, Matt Peacock, Samra Said, Katie Langford and Natasha Steer.
With Huge thanks to the Big Issue for supporting our vision for this edition.
