Second International Meeting of Arts Prescribing in Healthcare April 2026

Our team recently attended the second International Conference of Arts Prescribing in Healthcare which offered a powerful moment to take stock of where creative health is heading and what still needs to shift if it is to realise its full potential. (As well as the opportunity to partially climb Mount Olympus!) 

Bringing together a community of researchers, clinicians, artists, voluntary sector organisations and practitioners from across different national contexts, the conference created a space, not only to share projects, and experience practical examples of creative health, but also to question the assumptions that continue to shape how creative health is valued, evidenced and governed. 

Collaborative working – in action!  

One thing that stood out to me and the team was the importance of co-presenting work rather than speaking about partnership and collaborative cross-sector working from a distance. Across the conference, the most grounded and compelling contributions came from teams where community partners perspectives were at the forefront and the importance of artists and practitioners’ knowledge and expertise were highlighted. It was also one of the strengths of our panel presentation – a team effort to disseminate the work we are doing in Doncaster!

Evidence and approaches! 

Many of the discussions brought about questions of evidence, and particularly around how value is demonstrated, and to whom. Lived experience, practitioner intuition, and collective meaning making are difficult to formally measure, and yet these are precisely the elements that animate creative health interventions in practice. Presenters shared narrative, participatory and arts-based approaches that somewhat challenged quantitative approaches, demonstrating that there’s room for both. Furthermore, in creative health, successful outcomes often emerge through a complexity of programmes that are iterative and that have evolved over time, and there seems to be a growing confidence to argue for methods that reflect this reality.

Methodologies that centre shared storytelling, collective reflection and co creation were discussed as ways of shifting not only participant outcomes but organisational cultures and professional relationships. Story-based approaches were presented not as anecdotal evidence, but as rigorous modes of inquiry that reveal how systems are experienced from within.

Arts on Prescription in Greece 

Additionally international perspectives brought into focus how policy shapes what is possible. Developments in Greece, mean that psychologists are now able to prescribe creative interventions to improve emotional wellbeing, self-awareness and social inclusion through non-clinical interventions. (Greece draws upon over 2000 years of arts for health history… Let’s hope it doesn’t take so long for other countries to follow!)

This shift prompts a wider question for other countries to consider. What would need to change for creative health to be treated as essential rather than experimental, and who needs to be convinced for that change to happen?

Throughout the conference there was a clear thread around systems change. Creative health is no longer only concerned with individual wellbeing but rather is positioned as a means of addressing structural issues such as inequality, isolation and access to care.

Conversations by the community pointed to a field that is gaining momentum.  However creative health must continue to value partnership working, resist narrowing its evidential base, and advocate for policy that recognises creativity as a legitimate resource for health and wellbeing.

It’s safe to say that the entire experience was a really positive one and has been essential for developing even stronger partnership working!