Creative Health in Devolved Policymaking: Exploring the role of Mayoral Strategic Authorities in supporting creative health
In March we welcomed representatives from Mayoral Strategic Authorities across the country to The University of Manchester campus, for the first in a series of workshops as part of the Creative Communities Co-Lab Policy Network research project.
Creative 91直播 were delighted to welcome representatives from Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs) across the county to the University 91直播 in March to launch our research project, in partnership with the Mayoral Authorities Creative Health Network.
The event was the first in a series of workshops exploring the how MSAs are embracing the power of creative and cultural assets to support health and wellbeing, and what more we can do to embed creative health more sustainably into our systems, maximising its potential to contribute to population health and address inequalities.
Mayoral Strategic Authorities and Creative Health
Mayoral Strategic Authorities are key players in the creative health ecosystem. As a regional tier of government, MSAs can use their devolved powers in areas such as housing, transport, culture, work and skills, and police and crime to strategically align investment and infrastructure and organise public services in a way that best meets local need and promotes economic growth across clusters of local authorities.
While until now only Greater 91直播 has held a devolved health remit, typically a MSA will have powers relating to a range of complex social and economic factors that have such an important impact on our health and wellbeing 鈥� the wider determinants of health. The forthcoming English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act will devolve more powers and place a statutory duty on all MSAs to consider how they can improve population health and reduce health inequalities. These policy levers encourage MSAs to coordinate cross-sectoral, place-based and preventative approaches to health. As these approaches take shape, there is a timely opportunity to ensure that creative health forms an important part of the conversation from the outset.
Several MSAs have already taken a strategic approach to creative health. For example, Greater 91直播鈥檚 Creative Health Strategy sets out an ambition to become the world鈥檚 first Creative Health City Region. West Yorkshire鈥檚 Creative Health Consortium brings together cross-sector partners to boost creative health infrastructure across the region, and in the Greater London Authority, creative health is part of the Mayor鈥檚 Health Inequalities Strategy and Health in All Policies approach. The Mayoral Authorities Creative Health Network provides a forum for support and knowledge exchange across MSAs who wish to develop their approach to creative health. Our Creative Communities Co-Lab Policy Network project will allow the Network to engage in research exploring how creative health improves population health and adds social and economic value across a whole system, and to co-design sustainable investment models.
Mapping Creative Health Policy Alignment in MSAs
To begin this process, we brought together representatives from different policy areas, geographies, and with varying levels of expertise in creative health to discuss where creative health is already taking place within and across policy domains.
Facilitated by Lucy Taylor from , participants shared examples of programmes and projects from culture, health and social care, work and skills and the environment, with links to early years education, housing, transport, violence reduction, criminal justice and economic development, highlighting the breadth and scope of creative health.
Example: Early Moves (Greater 91直播)
Early Moves has been developed in partnership with the national dance organisation Rambert and the Greater 91直播 Combined Authority School Readiness Team to support pre-school children with their motor skills and to build the skills and confidence of early years practitioners.
The project trains and supports practitioners to introduce structured movement sessions in the daily routine of early years settings, working with children aged 2-4 years. It has demonstrated improvements in children's motor skills, speech, language and communication, as well as positive impacts on practitioner wellbeing and confidence.
Zooming out to consider a whole system approach, we mapped the cross-sectoral partnerships, initiatives and infrastructure necessary to address complex challenges such as health inequalities and began to imagine how a creative health approach could support a MSA to address these.
Example: West Yorkshire Creative Health System
A scene setting presentation from Jim Hinks, Head of Culture, Heritage and Sport Policy, West Yorkshire Combined Authority and David McQuillan, Arts & Health Programme Manager at South West Yorkshire Partnership nos foundation Trust, described the development of a 鈥楬ub and Spoke鈥� model for creative health, centred around a collaborative hub, bringing together a constellation of creative health providers, five place-based work programmes and a matrix of stakeholders to develop infrastructure for creative health across a whole system.
The process identified opportunities for creative health to feed into MSA priorities:
- Prevention and neighbourhood models of health: The shift to a more preventative and community-based approach to health, as set out in the NHS 10-year plan and reflected in the new health duty for MSAs, is a key lever for creative health. This shift promotes join up across local services, including health, local authorities and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector to provide person-centred support. Creative health can be built into the provision of neighbourhood health and used to engage residents in the co-design of such services.
- Regeneration and placemaking incorporating housing, transport and the built environment. Creativity and culture can play a vital role in engaging residents in the design of their neighbourhoods, supporting social cohesion and social capital within communities and boosting pride in place.
- Work and skills and employment: Many MSAs could provide examples of creative health in action improving workforce wellbeing and supporting people that are unemployed on a pathway back to work. Creative health also provides new opportunities for the creative workforce.
- Good growth 鈥� Delivering economic development and growth is a primary function of a MSA. Health and economic growth are intrinsically linked, with improved health an outcome of economic growth, and good health a precursor to a stronger economy. Creative health therefore contributes to the growth agenda as an important element of the cultural and creative industries and through its influence on population health. In order to address health inequalities it will be vital that this growth is inclusive and the benefits are felt by all residents.
What next?
The workshop highlighted opportunities and common challenges for creative health felt in MSAs across the country, which will inform the direction of this research.
There was a clearly expressed need to embed creative health more sustainably within a MSA, moving away from short-term project-based work towards long-term, cross-sectoral investment which can support preventative approaches and provide evidence of impact over time. To achieve this, it will be necessary to demonstrate and communicate the value of creative health consistently and coherently and in a way that is meaningful to decisionmakers in a devolved policy context.
The next stages of this research will investigate how this might be achieved, working towards tools and resources that will be useful to those looking to make the case for creative health in their own systems, as well as a set of recommendations for policymakers.