Introducing Doncaster Creative Health Board

Every member of Doncaster’s Creative Health Board shares the same vision. We want everyone in Doncaster to be able to access participatory creative activities, resulting in them feeling happier, healthier and more resilient.

We come from a range of backgrounds and experiences, from creative practitioners to GPs, from working in Public Health to local charities, and from working at systems change level to delivering Creative Health programmes directly to residents in communities.

This collaborative working began when darts and Dr Rupert Suckling (then Director of Public Health Doncaster) were inspired by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Creative Health report, which demonstrated how Creative Health could keep our residents well, aid their recovery and support longer lives better lived. We had already been living and breathing Creative Health work for years through our long running participatory arts programmes. Whether that was singing programmes with adults living with dementia to develop new friendships and reduce loneliness, inspiring older adults to dance with us each week to increase their physical activity and reduce fear falling, or delivering weekly creative sessions for adults experiencing mental health issues and empowering them to develop and maintain connection with others. The APPG report felt like a turning point.

In 2018, Dr Rupert Suckling (Director of Public Health) and I led an event both to share the findings from the APPG Creative Health report, and to highlight the existing Creative Arts work that was happening in Doncaster. We called for interested parties to join us to lead Doncaster’s response to the Creative Health reportand build on decades of best practice. There was a lot of excitement and connections made, and from this we formed the membership of what was then the Doncaster Arts & Health Board.

The Board identified three starting priorities: adult mental health, supporting adults with dementia and increasing physical activity in older adults. From 2022, children and young people’s mental health as added as an additional priority.  

Between 2018 – 2022 we secured almost £800k from seven funders for a series of pilot programmes across Doncaster, with 95% of funding coming from outside the borough.  We worked with academic partners such as University of Leeds, Arc research and Sheffield Hallam University to demonstrate the impact of these Creative Health programmes. 

In 2021 we conducted several Think Tanks about the vision for Creative Health in Doncaster, which fed into the Doncaster Culture Strategy. We collaborated with cultural and health professionals to identify the following vision:

We want to improve the profile of Creative Health programmes so that they are inclusive and accessible, widely used and valued by both residents and health professionals.  We want to use our robust evidence base to develop sustainably funded models which are embedded in care pathways, with professionals fully recognising the benefits of taking part in creative activity. 

We continued meeting as a Board until we hit the pandemic when we struggled to maintain regular contact. It was a double whammy as our health partners were fully engaged in emergency responses, and as arts organisations we were working to keep our residents creative and connected through zoom, face to face sessions using outdoor spaces, postal packs with creative activities to do at home, and door to door check ins and creative chats.

Fast forward to 2024 and our Doncaster Creative Health Board (as it is now known) is thriving.  The Board links through both the Culture Strategy Portfolio and the Health & Wellbeing Boards into the Team Doncaster structure. It leads on the delivery of Creative Health priorities in the new Doncaster Culture Strategy. Through the UKRI/AHRC Creative Health Boards research programme we now have the capacity to identify through action research programmes:

• Identify methods to demonstrate how art, culture and creative activities can be made more accessible for people at most risk of poor health.
• Test new approaches to funding, delivering and measuring the impact of art, culture and creative activities provided by community assets.
• Build the skills and confidence of community assets to carry out their own research and use evidence to improve how they work.
• Develop new tools and guidance, including a Creative Health handbook, so that art, culture and creative activities can become a key part of health and care services across the UK.

Doncaster Creative Health Board membership includes senior leaders from Public Health and City of Doncaster Council, cultural organisations (darts, Cast and Heritage Doncaster), local doctors and medical directors, academic researchers and local charities. We are developing our knowledge in how to successfully bring lived experience to the board in 2025.  We meet once a month for one hour (hybrid face to face/online) and the Board is co-chaired by Lucy Robertshaw (darts) and Clare Henry (Public Health). 

There are now Creative Health Boards set up in Sheffield, Rotherham and Barnsley and these feed into the South Yorkshire Creative Health Board which was set up in 2024. We also represent South Yorkshire at the Metro Mayors Creative Health Network meeting.

Going forward we will improve the profile of Creative Health programmes (through our new Creative Health Connector role) so that they are accessible, widely used and valued by both residents and healthcare professionals. We will work to embed Creative Health interventions into Doncaster communities and into health and care pathways to reduce health inequalities and support people to lead longer and healthier lives.