Arts and Creativity

Follow this link to find out the latest information about the Creative Health Awards

What do we mean by Creative Health?

Creative Health is an approach to address Health and Wellbeing through engagement in creative activities such as dance, drama, visual art, film making, music or puppetry to name a few! There are many benefits of the approach in terms of our children and young people here in the North East and North Cumbria.

The Ofsted framework for personal development states:
[Paragraph 291]. The curriculum provided by schools should extend beyond the academic, technical or vocational. Schools support pupils to develop in many diverse aspects of life. The personal development judgement is used by inspectors to evaluate the school’s intent to provide for the personal development of all pupils, and the quality with which the school implements this work.

Creative Health Quality Framework (culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk)

The Child Health and Wellbeing Network strive to support creative health projects.

Child HW Network NENC logo

Who are the Child Health and Wellbeing Network?

The Child Health and Wellbeing Network's (CHWN) brings together people from all sectors across the region, such as health, education, local authorities and the voluntary and community sector, to work with children, young people and their families to make sure our work is more able to support them and have a positive impact.

We are proud to be part of a small but growing network in the North East and North Cumbria that plans to make a real difference to children’s services.

Join the Child Health and Wellbeing Network

The CHWN's Creative Health work so far:

Delivered specific NHS England pieces of work for children Partnership bids to access new funding
Developed advisor roles to influence our work from the broad system across system membership - now with over 2000 members signed up
Held events to share good practice
Produced a quarterly newsletter, weekly update and social media presence

One of the Child Health and Wellbeing Network's key cross cutting themes is art and creativity, this has led to them creating an awards programme in honour of their former Arts and Creativity Executive Lead, for primary schools; The Chris Drinkwater Creative Health in Primary Schools Awards.

The network has always promoted work in the creative arts one example is The South Tees Arts Project (STAR), an innovative school-based project to access to the arts for people living in areas of South Tees with levels of deprivation and improve health and wellbeing S.T.A.R. - resources for sharing - TIN Arts

Arts and Creativity Advisor

Martin Wilson MBE is the Child Health and Wellbeing Network's Arts and Creativity Advisor

Martin has worked in arts and culture in North East England for over 25 years. He is the Director of TIN Arts in Durham. TIN Arts delivers activities across the North East and their vision is to create a world in which everybody has access to the arts. They hope to achieve this by removing barriers and increasing access to high-quality dance and performing arts. Martin started working with the Child Health and Wellbeing Network in 2019 as part of the STAR project. He is now in his second year as Arts & Creativity Advisor to the network. Connect with Martin

Arts and Creativity Advisor

Martin Wilson MBE is the Child Health and Wellbeing Network's Arts and Creativity Advisor

Martin Wilson TinArts

National Centre for Creative Health and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing launched Creative Health Review

The Creative Health Review will highlight the potential for creative health to help tackle pressing issues in health and social care and more widely, including health inequalities and the additional challenges we face as we recover from Covid-19.

As well as producing recommendations to the Government, we hope the findings of the review will be useful and inspiring for regional and local leaders, and that the evidence and examples presented will be interesting to those involved in creative health and wider audiences.

The Child Health and Wellbeing Network's NENC STAR initiative is listed on page 72 of the document and there are some important key messages and detail within the report that will be of interest to those working with Children and Young People.

LEAP - Little explorers and parents and families project

This Northern Ballet initiative, Little Explorers And Parents and families project or LEAP, was focused in Nursery settings and was delivered by Early Years Practitioners with aspirations of family involvement. The evaluation document describes the key aims were to offer an accessible way for pre-school children from disadvantaged areas to engage in movement, music, storytelling, and multisensory experiences. The LEAP project has been piloted in five early years settings across northern England and an evaluation was conducted to gather insights from key people to inform its scalability and transferability. Please download and share the evaluation document and its findings with interested colleagues. The document includes contact details and full acknowledgements.

Movement in children specifically develops gross motor and fine motor skills, improving range of motion, coordination, strength and endurance (Faber, 2017). Research conducted in North East England noted a strong association between physical activity, motor skills and the likelihood of achieving school readiness in 4 and 5 year olds LEAP evaluation report July 2024 Page 5 (Jones et al, 2021). Movement also provides an opportunity for cognitive development by contributing to neurological organization in the brain and complex thought process growth, as well as intertwined communitive, emotional and social development. Bodily movement becomes a powerful tool for young children when learning to express themselves (Faber, 2017). Creating opportunities for children to move encourages bodily awareness and a consciously expressive and communicative child through intentional movements and gestures. Research conducted in school settings in the US found that movement in the classroom built confidence and social skills (Gehris et al, 2014). Relationships between educators and students were also strengthened as movement promoted emotional connections and trust.

S Visram et al July 2024