Hywel Dda’s Creative Prescribing Discovery Programme

A short film to share the story of Hywel Dda’ s Creative Prescribing Discovery Programme. This was a cross-sector partnership project designed to explore how best to embed evidenced based arts activity into social prescribing practice across the health board to reduce health inequalities.
You can also read the case study story on Wales Arts Health and Wellbeing Network Knowledge Bank at Creative Prescribing Discovery Programme | Wales Arts Health & Well-being Network (wahwn.cymru)
Or read the full Evaluation Report produced by Tri Tech at F070-Final-Evaluation-Report-Creative-Prescribing-05.06.2024.pdf (nhs.wales)
Funded by Hywel Dda University Health Board, Arts Council of Wales and 2xTs Cluster Funding.
Keep in touch with our Arts and Health journey at:
hduhb.nhs.wale...
biphdd.gig.cym...
Transcipt:
At Hywel Dda University Health Board, we're at the early stages of our arts and health journey. We've been having a conversation with artists, health professionals and members of the public about creative prescribing or arts on prescription. Creative prescribing is a way of connecting people with the arts to help people to better manage their own health and well-being. It's built on the growing evidence base that activities such as singing, dancing,
craft or reading a good book boosts our mood, connects us with others and improves our well-being. We've been asking what's needed to better connect people with the arts in their local communities through a series of cafes, residencies and projects.
Today, we've had a group of people come together to discuss creative prescribing in Pembrokeshire. It helps with mental health issues, physical health issues, reconnects people to community. They can make friends. Just improves their general wellbeing really. Gives them an activity and a purpose and sometimes a passion.
I’ve been working quite a lot with people in old people’s homes, people with disabilities and things like that. We’ve seen better results with people opening up about their health more generally if there is a chance for them to at least be creative.
(Fi di bod yn gweithio eithaf lot gyda pobl mean tai’r henoed, pobl gyda anableddau a pethau fordd na. Ma na gwell canlyniadau i ni’n gweld gyda bobl o rhannu iechyd nhw yn fwy cyffridional os ma na siawns gyda nhw oleif yn bod yn greadigol.)
We're looking up for people that maybe having issues with something that's been neglected for a long time across the whole of the UK, like mental health issues. Even people just feeling really low and depressed, anxious about just stepping outside the doorstep. Bringing the arts in, teaching the little things or sitting down like we've done today, have fun cutting things out, sticking on pieces of paper. It brings together people who might not necessarily spoken to each other for a while or have never met anybody.
Collaging lends itself really well as an activity, a wellbeing activity. The active like to simply cutting out, choosing images, sticking them down can really bring you into the present moment and really calm the nervous system down and just gives you the opportunity to just slow down. It's a really lovely offline activity that we use in the vision boards as a tool and a
start of a conversation really, of where things should go next.
We've had some really, really positive feedback from people that they've enjoyed, that they've had physical benefits, but also that they felt that it's been good for their mental wellbeing and that they've made friends and social links through it.
By the end of it, it's like they have a sense of empowerment or like achievement that they've created something you know now and that again, it builds confidence, and it can build self-esteem and things as well.
Looking forward to the next events and all of the other events in this project. I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation. We're looking forward to building all of the experience and the knowledge that we've sort of learned in these sessions and this project into a report that we can give people to try and understand creative prescribing better and try and make recommendations to really try and embed and grow the creative prescribing
movement.