It’s pretty usual to hear people in the arts talk about wellbeing. (Generally, we talk about it whenever our funding is under threat. “No” we say. “You can’t possibly cut us. We contribute to people’s wellbeing.”
And it’s true, we do. But how many of us in the arts are engaged with the people who are thinking about wellbeing (and particularly the wellbeing of the most disadvantaged) week in, week out? When Newcastle’s arts sector was successfully fighting against the 100% cuts that were being suggested, the arts’ contribution to wellbeing was frequently mentioned. And yet when a seminar was organised by Newcastle Council two weeks ago to discuss Newcastle’s Wellbeing Strategy, there were only two arts organisations present. All the senior people from the Council were there. All the city’s key voluntary sector organisations which promote wellbeing were there. Where was the arts sector?
We need to do better than this. If we say we make a contribution, then we need to be part of the conversations that make it real – that enable us to join up with others doing this work.
And the most important reason why we need to be part of these conversations is that we have something unique to offer. Making art is a process of discovery. Of embarking on a journey in which the destination is uncertain:
“Each picture as I finish it, seems like the best thing I have ever done…and yet after a while I am not so sure. It is like taking a train to Marseille. One knows where one wants to go. Each painting completed is like a station—just so much nearer the goal. The time comes when the painter is apt to feel he has at last arrived. Then, if he is honest, he realizes one of two things—either that he has not arrived after all, or that Marseille…is not where he wanted to go anyway, and he must push farther on.” Henri Matisse
This is especially true of Participatory Art. Participatory Art offers people the opportunity to explore their own personal and creative journeys. To explore who they are through creativity, to understand and share the story of themselves. It doesn't prescribe an outcome in advance. It doesn't say, "you must have a job at the end of this programme". It doesn't say, "you must achieve a 15% improvement on the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale". These things may well happen, but only if they're right for the people concerned, only if they're part of the journey that people have decided for themselves.
Much of the social policy world (which is where these conversations about wellbeing mostly happen) has become victim to Outcomes-Based Performance Management (OBPM), which in its purest form exists as Payment by Results. This discourse tells people what they must achieve in advance (a job, a 15% improvement…) and anyone who fails to achieve this gets punished.
It doesn’t matter if having to take the first awful job that comes along is actually harmful for that person. It doesn’t matter if declining scores on the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale actually represent an improvement in people’s wellbeing because they now have a more realistic appraisal of their own lives (this is a relatively common story from participants on arts and mental health projects); unless you achieve pre-defined targets, you will be punished. The organisation which failed to deliver this target doesn’t get paid. The worker who has failed to make their client achieve gets fired. The service user who fails to make the grade gets their support withdrawn. (Work Programme clients who are judged less likely to get a job receive significantly less support).
When we do Participatory Arts well, our sector represents one of the remaining bastions of genuinely developmental activity to support people’s wellbeing. We achieve outcomes, but we don’t get trapped in the bureaucracy of telling people what those outcomes must be in adavance. We empower people to take the journeys that they want to go on, because that’s what right for them. We free people to start by thinking they want to go to Marseille, but then realise that their destination is in their own hands.
This is part of what the arts has to offer those who are thinking about wellbeing. Let’s engage.
