Arts, Culture and Heritage: Understanding their complex effects on our health

A free self-directed online course.

The course introduces the knowledge base of how community resources, including arts, culture and heritage activities can improve our physical and mental health and wellbeing.

About the course

In the last decade, researchers have increasingly focused on how community resources, or ‘assets,’ can protect and enhance health and wellbeing. These assets can be mobilised to improve individuals’ health, known as an asset-based approach to health.

Assets are wide-ranging. They are the resources, skills and knowledge of individuals, community and voluntary associations, public and private organisations, and physical environments. They include libraries, writing groups, archives, gardens, exercise classes, sporting events, volunteering and charitable groups, and community organisations such as youth services, trade unions, and religious groups.

There are an estimated 1 million assets within communities in the UK, ranging from theatre societies to community gardens.

Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London (UCL), supported by the MARCH Network, developed this course to increase knowledge and understanding of how community resources, including arts, culture and heritage activities can improve our physical and mental health and wellbeing.

​Who is it for?

The course is open to all, but is aimed at early careers researchers and community organisations with an interest in understanding how community resources, including arts, culture and heritage activities can improve our physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Course aims

Upon completion of the course you will understand:

  • What ‘health’ is and the evidence for the influence of arts activities on health outcomes.
  • The barriers people face to accessing arts activities and how interventions and policies can be designed to help overcome them.
  • The active ingredients or components of arts activities that may lead to health and wellbeing outcomes.
  • The biological, social, psychological and behavioural mechanisms through which arts activities can affect mental and physical health and wellbeing.
  • The contextual factors or moderators that influence how the arts affect our health.
  • How researchers can adopt the principles of complexity science to examine the effect of arts activities on health.

Course structure

The course topics are split out into five modules, with activities to test your knowledge, as you work through the modules. It does not have an assessment. The entire course involves up to four hours of study.

Course contents

  • Introduction to the course
  • Module 1: The health benefits of engagement
  • Module 2: The predictors of engagement
  • Module 3: Active ingredients
  • Module 4: Mechanisms of action
  • Module 5: Modelling complexity

Enrol now