Within our team, we have a particular interest in the impact of the arts on our health and wellbeing. Our collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) in recent years led them to grant our Group the status of WHO Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health in 2021.
This status encourages us to collaborate with the WHO and others to realise the potential for our research to contribute to global developments in policy and practice. Our focus on both social assets and social deficits also allows us to inform policies around particular public health concerns such as loneliness, isolation, and mental health. We can do this by both articulating the impact of those deficits on health and providing evidence to show which interventions and strategies may improve public health.
We are in regular contact with the WHO Europe Behavioural and Cultural Insights team, contributing to key meetings and reports; this supports the WHO to advance policies around arts and health both within the organisation, and throughout its member states.