Author: Professor Paul Crawford
From books to films, and singing to dancing, our cultural health is very much part of our social, physical and mental health. We can lead healthier lives through participating in culture, in the arts. We can think of such activity as ‘creative survival’ (Crawford & Crawford, 2021), helping us to reduce our stress, connect with others, and enjoy a colourful and fulfilling life.
In the Arts for Health Series with Emerald, there are now sixteen public health volumes revealing how various activities in the arts and humanities from painting and music to storytelling can enhance our health and wellbeing. There are recent volumes that focus on creative writing (Pearson & Foster, 2024), dancing (Colin & Stamp, 2024) and even body art (Brown & Berndt, 2023). The creative arts and humanities alongside crafts are powerful contributors to the health of any nation. Multiple studies and reports underpin the value of diverse creative activities for our physical and mental health (e.g., APPG, 2017; BOP Consulting, 2017; Coulton et al., 2015; Crawford et al., 2015, 2019; Crawford & Kadetz, 2024; Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2016; Fancourt & Finn, 2019).
Engagement in creative activities is clearly key to public health and the variety and scope of these social and cultural resources is huge. Millions of people in the UK alone engage in the arts (Dodd, et al., 2013), with some 40,000 choirs (Wright, 2017) and all kinds of groups in theatre, dancing, readings and so on. Digital creative activities, not least in gaming (See Danilovic, 2024) are also coming to the fore, recently and brilliantly represented in the documentary film, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, about gamer Mats Steen who literally survives creatively while enduring and succumbing to degenerative Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
I too survived creatively through writing fiction. After a traumatic childhood, I turned to writing to break free from the factual world, where trust eroded and lies replaced the comforts of family life. I learned to survive through the pen and computer keyboard. I found my own voice and, like Mats Steen, an alternative reality, a welcome hallucinatory haven.
In the novel, the worlds of Jason Hemp, an English lecturer, and Dr Bent, the unlikely Medical Director of high-security psychiatric hospital Foston Hall, come together in a dark tale of murder, revenge and abandonment. Attempting to track down his twin brother’s killer, Jason finds his life unravelling in unexpected and frightening ways, whilst visionary Dr Bent attempts to reform Foston Hall into a more creative environment (his ‘wonders’), all while facing his own mental health challenges. The novel delves into criminal accountability, mental health and the power of the arts to save individuals from mental decline. It asks: When everything is falling apart, who do you trust? Commenting on the novel, Dr Gene Beresin, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School writes that it “brilliantly draws us in to the suffering of its characters – their battles with the impact of adverse childhood experiences and trauma on loss, grief and depression. It makes a compelling case for all of us to seek recovery, as health professionals and lay individuals alike.”
Find out how to pre-order 'The Wonders of Doctor Bent' on the Waterstones website
Hear more about 'Creative Survival' from Paul
Paul will be doing a talk 'Creative Survival: Books Really Can Save Lives' at Nottingham Central Library on 13th March 2025, 7pm-9pm
More information about the talk can be found here
Author
More about Professor Paul Crawford on the Centre for SoFU page
References
BOP Consulting. (2017). Reading Well Books on Prescription: Evaluation of Year 4 – 2016/17. Author.
Brown, B. & Berndt, V.H. (2023) Body Art. Bingley: Emerald.
Colin, N. & Stamp, K. (2024) Dancing. Bingley: Emerald.
Crawford, P. & Crawford, J.O. (2021) Cabin Fever: Surviving Lockdown in the Coronavirus Pandemic. Bingley: Emerald.
Pearson, M. & Foster, H. (2024) Creative Writing. Bingley: Emerald.
APPG, 2017;
Coulton, S., Clift, S., Skingley, A., & Rodriguez, J. (2015). Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of community singing on mental health-related quality of life of older people: randomised controlled trial. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 207(3), 250–255.
Crawford, P., Brown, B., Baker, C., Tischler, V., & Abrams, B. (Eds.). (2015). Health Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Crawford, P., Brown, B., & Charise, A. (Eds.). (2019). The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities. Routledge.
Crawford, P. & Kadetz, P (Editors in Chief) (2024) Encyclopedia of Health Humanities. Springer Nature: New York.
Danilovic, S. (2024) Games. Bingley: Emerald.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport. (2016). The Culture White Paper [White paper]. Crown.
Dodd, F., Graves, A., & Taws, K. (2013). Our Creative Talent – the voluntary and amateur arts in England. Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Fancourt, D., & Finn, S. (2019). What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. WHO Regional Office for Europe.
Wright, K. (2017). Voices Now reveals results of Big Choral Census. Rhinegold.