The evidence base for how the arts affect our health and wellbeing now constitutes over 5,000 empirical studies. However, the majority of these focus on the short-term effects of bespoke arts programmes on relatively small numbers of people. Are these same findings found at a population level? Does arts engagement affect our health and wellbeing even decades later? And could arts and cultural provision within society help to prevent the incidence of mental and physical illness in the first place?

In this webinar Dr Daisy Fancourt will present the findings from 7 years of epidemiological work from UCL’s Social Biobehavioural Research Group, using studies that have tracked tens of thousands of individuals’ arts engagement over their entire life course.

It will show the quantifiable impact that arts and cultural engagement can have on public health and the psychological, biological, social and behavioural mechanisms through which this is achieved. It will also consider how inequalities in access to the arts could be addressed, and how schemes such as social prescribing can integrate health and arts agendas.