Healing Arts Scotland, a national arts and health festival, engages policymakers in the vital role of culture to support Scottish health systems
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- Healing Arts Scotland directly informed Scottish health policy
- Public Health Scotland adopting arts and health methods
- Will integrate into initiatives to reduce health inequality affecting 5.4m people
21 January 2025
Holyrood, Scotland
Scottish Ballet and the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), announced the Healing Arts Scotland impact report today at the Scottish Parliament. This ground-breaking report showcases the impact of the world’s first national arts and health week which took place across Scotland in August 2024, incorporating 376 events and attracting over 11,000 attendees. The report positions Scotland as a global leader in arts and health and highlights areas in which evidence-based arts programmes can support public health.
The Healing Arts Scotland event at the Scottish Parliament was attended by key representatives of the Scottish Government and showcased the research outcomes of the report, prepared by the University of Edinburgh, laying the groundwork for a new Scottish cross-parliamentary group focused on arts and health.
Speakers – including Angus Robertson MSP, cabinet secretary for constitution, external affairs and culture, Angiolina Foster, chair of Public Health Scotland, and Christopher Bailey, arts and health lead, WHO, and founding co-director, Jameel Arts & Health Lab – recognised the role Healing Arts Scotland had played in ensuring that scientific evidence for the impact of the arts on health and wellbeing is informing public health policy in Scotland.
As well as the new cross-parliamentary group, policy initiatives directly informed by Healing Arts Scotland include embedding evidence-based arts and health activities in Public Health Scotland to help reduce health inequalities that affect over 5.4 million people and support the prevention and management of physical and mental health conditions.
Scotland’s chief medical officer, Sir Gregor Smith, commented: “I congratulate Scottish Ballet, the Jameel Arts & Health Lab and the World Health Organisation for demonstrating how the arts might help us reimagine our national model of health and social care in a way that can measurably impact communities. Healing Arts Scotland was a celebration of how the arts can create skylights of hope and joy for those people who need it the most.”
At the end of the event, Scottish Ballet was designated by the Lab as the second global Jameel Arts & Health Lab Healing Arts Centre of Excellence, a recognition of its outstanding leadership of Healing Arts Scotland 2024 and its ongoing commitment to improving community health through the arts.
This follows the designation of Carnegie Hall in New York during the 2024 UN General Assembly as the inaugural Jameel Arts & Health Lab Healing Arts Centre of Excellence.
The Healing Arts Scotland impact report follows the publication earlier last year of a Frontier Economics report that revealed the improvements to people's health and wellbeing that come from engagement with arts and culture are worth more than GBP 8 billion a year to the British economy.