Halpern Charitable Foundation/Nucleus Arts

Even before the Covid pandemic we faced a mental health crisis, a crisis exacerbated by world events. Engaging in creative activities has been shown by numerous studies (WHO Health Evidence Network synthesis report 67) to reduce the harms of many aspects of mental health and loneliness, reducing the need for medical interventions, and reducing the burden on over-stretched health systems. However the existing methods for effectively evaluating particular activities is cumbersome, particularly for people afflicted by multiple conditions. They require complex questionnaires and rely on subjective reporting.  Providing a 'health-economics' argument, is also difficult, and beyond the reach of many small service providers. Without this evidence healthcare agency are reluctant to fund  creative activities as a treatment, leading to, at best more medication, and at worst a lack of any treatment.  

If awarded I would use the funding in an attempt to develop effective methodologies of evaluation - applicable to all circumstances. I would look to develop a consortium of organisations, individuals and practitioners, with the aim to help build a suite of tools that can be used, globally, to evaluate the impacts  of an activity in order to determine and prove its efficacy and list these in a database.

At Halpern Charitable Foundation/Nucleus Arts, we believe in a world where everyone can express their creativity, no matter their age, background, status or health. By making the arts open and accessible to all we aim to promote creative thinking, support the creative economy, and use the healing power of the arts to improve mental and physical health.

Each year we provide around 4,000 places  at our arts and wellbeing sessions. For those people who are unable to come to us, this year we provide a wide range of arts and craft activities online, and even take our craft activities out to a number of residential homes, schools and vulnerable households across Medway. Many of our attendees report our work to be an essential lifeline to them, without which they would have very little social interaction at all. 

We are engaged widely in policy development for Medway’s mental health, regeneration, and creativity sectors, from the social isolation network, to the Town Centre Forum, to the local City of Culture bid. We also support and advise numerous charity partners and provide space for their activities.

According to Rehm et al (Current Psychology doi: 10.1007/s11920-019-0997-0) mental health disorders affect more than 1 billion people globally. They cause 7% of all global disease burden and 19% of all years lived with disability. The economic impact of this is huge. The total impact  of poor mental health is estimated to cost the world economy approximately $2·5 trillion per year rising to almost $6 trillion by 2030 (Lancet doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30432-0). The WHO Mental Health Atlas 2017 found that, on average, mental health expenditure accounted for less than 2% of government budgets for health. 

HCF is based in Medway, Kent. The area reports 12 neighbourhoods in the 10% most deprived in the country and 20 in the 20% most deprived in the country (Index of Multiple Deprivation). Child and elderly poverty are particular issues according to the IMD, as are low aspirations and high incidence of mental health issues.

We are a registered charity that uses simple to apply creative activities to tackle mental health issues. Whilst effective, we, like many other organisations, lack a good, transferable, evaluation mechanism to evidence to funders or evaluate the approaches of other organisations. This project aims to address this.

Our proposed project would be a step change in the application of creative activity in the treatment of mental health disorders. It would have three unique features that would completely disrupt the way such activities take place.

1) We would focus on developing a suite of passive evaluation measures as well as more traditional questionnaire-based approaches. These independent measures would enable a practitioner to gather effectiveness data without the disruption of a survey. It would also prove effective in situations where language, culture, and ability make effective surveying difficult.

2) We would aim to create a globally-applicable minimum reporting standard for creative activities. Using the evaluation suite, we would create a transferable measure that can be used to score an activity. By including appropriate demographic data, and having these data freely available it will enable practitioners to share and utilise proven effective approaches, tailor these to local circumstance, and re-share their leaning.

3) We would aim to create a diverse global network of creative practitioners, as a first step to professionalising this role. This role differs from an 'art therapist' as the activities are often group-led, non-medical, and flexible in terms of location and approach. 

We already work to address these issues, but as a small charity we lack the funds or scale to drive this vision beyond the local/regional level. The ELEVATE prize funding will allow us to accelerate this work, funding dedicated staff, holding events and providing resources to experiment, whilst the kudos and publicity of the award will help to open doors and build a buzz around what we are trying to achieve.   

In normal times we deliver around 4000 free activity places annually, supporting hundreds of vulnerable families and over 40 micro-business. During Covid we adapted our work to provide over 24,000 resources/activities packs to vulnerable local households. Anecdotally, this has made a huge local impact, but it is hard to measure this in any meaningful way.

As we hopefully return to normal, we would like to expand our delivery, but are limited by funding. To win grants we require good evaluation of effectiveness, but are hampered by the lack of effective tools and a wider recognition of the value of creative practitioners.  We already work to promote creative activity through local health, regeneration and business networks, but this prize would allow us to accelerate this at a much wider level.