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This week brought us the Unesco-promoted World Art Day, an opportunity to celebrate the role art has in creativity, cultural diversity, sharing knowledge and encouraging dialogue. This year’s theme is about how art can bring us together in challenging and difficult circumstances.
Art and science are often treated as separate disciplines, yet I think they cross over and often deliver the same message, just in a different way. Science can inform art and art can lead to incredible scientific discoveries.
The word “art” might feel alien to some of us, and can feel unattainable – like a famous historical painting in a gallery. But actually art is I think, everything that allows us to express who we are and allows us to be creative. That can include drawing, painting, crafting, pottery, knitting, garden design, coding for computer games, DIY and many, many other things.
Art is what you want it to be. The common theme of all activities that underpin art is that when we engage in them, we feel we are being authentic, we feel we are expressing ourselves and we are taken away from all of the day-to-day stresses of the world just for that time.
We think of how our minds, bodies and emotions work as being very much science-based – a world of chemicals and hormones and moving structural parts. Yet, our wellbeing and health is affected greatly by how we use art in our daily lives, and how we use creativity as a strategy for how we feel.
So how can art support our wellbeing?
Our health
Getting involved in arts and creativity can help us to process difficult life events and feelings, and in recovery from trauma. It can help to reduce our stress levels, as well as our pain levels and anxiety and helps in managing some chronic health conditions. Having another way to express your feelings, your thoughts and to have others see you for who you authentically are can improve your wellbeing. Using creativity can also help to build resilience to tough life events or difficult periods in life. We learn to use our imagination again, to have some escapism from our worries and to see an outcome from what we do.
Connection
Creative activities also gives us the opportunity to meet other people, to be part of a group, to find people with interests that we have in common, and to avoid isolation. Chronic loneliness has been shown to be as damaging to our health as smoking 10 to 15 cigarettes a day, so any strategies that can help reduce this are important to focus on.
It may be a group activity that gives a structure and routine to our week, or an online community that shares creations and allows users to comment and connect, or it could be that through art you connect with yourself more, who you are and how you feel.
Activism and change
One of the things that is really beneficial for our wellbeing is to feel that our actions and words can change things for the better. Art allows us to focus on the issues we face as a world and it fosters empathy, understanding and perspective. Many artists have changed the world for the greater good of others, while they, too, have been changed. When our actions result in things getting better, we are encouraged to do more, we feel the benefit from altruism and connection, and we feel a greater sense of belonging to the wider world.
