Using arts, culture and heritage interventions to address health inequalities in Birmingham

During 2022/23, the public health communities team at Birmingham City Council commissioned an array of projects for the Arts, Culture and Health programme, notably a Jamaican 60th Anniversary Celebration Event which focused upon raising awareness in the following five focus areas of health: Pregnancy, Mental Health, Musculoskeletal Disease, Cardiovascular Disease, and Diabetes. Alongside this, a series of live cooking demonstrations and community festivals were held in part as a celebration of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth games and to celebrate the cultural and ethnic diversity within Birmingham, a model which was built upon and tailored towards the rise in the cost of living.

The idea of arts and culture suggests a sense of belonging and shared identity, upholding identities and beliefs, a set of values, a way to bring people together, an expression of stories, creating a sense of community. Our work during the year of 2022/2023 was aimed towards building an evidence base and valuable community based insights by engaging and championing the inclusive benefits of management and treatment and prevention and promotion arts and culture interventions.

Our projects helped remove barriers to participation to engagement with health interventions by providing direct and targeted communications across trust formal and informal peer-to-peer networks to build a sense of community. Projects were tailored towards important events in which the community could relate which removes apprehension. Building upon this, our focus was targeted towards the method of co-creation by inviting people to be a part of events and take on tasks that provide a sense of ownership to engagement.

The arts, culture and health programme has been a powerful deliverer of engagement across diverse communities, building bridges, and making lasting connections. An inclusive and diverse programme of activity that explores the relationships between arts, culture and health helps promote community cohesion, making health improvements, develop new skills and knowledge whilst engaging with new audiences.

If you would like to learn more about our projects or programme, please contact Rhys Boyer at rhys.boyer@birmingham.gov.uk