1: Role of Creative Catalyst in health ecosystem
Create Health is a series of micro experiments designed to test what ‘living well’ means and how arts, creativity and culture contribute to by
preventing poor health
supporting recovery from illness
and contributing towards an overall sense of belonging here
The long term aim of Create Health is that communities can access and have control over the resources they need for a vibrant art, culture and creativity offer that is every day for everyone.
So in this first micro-test we looked whether the creative catalyst role added value to the social prescribing ecosystem? If so how?
Our Vision for this test is: The Health system in Gloucestershire includes Creative Catalysts as part of the workforce.
The test. Two of Create Gloucestershire's Place based Creative catalyst roles were tasked with reviewing their work with a health lens over a 6 month period.
We found that:
Creative catalyst are well placed to compliment and support social prescribing teams by building and sharing local knowledge, supporting community members before and after participating in social prescribing activities and identifying unmet needs. They build connections with wider community and identify groups, classes or local individuals that can deliver quality sessions.
The catalyst can advocate for the value of arts, culture and creativity, alongside medication in partnership with organisations. Creative catalysts work within the intersection between arts, crafts, health, nature and race and build infrastructure to bridge the gaps. The health ecosystem works better together when complimenting not competing for funding.
Creative catalysts can be proactive in identifying producer gaps for activities, unmet needs and pulling together potential delivery partners in response to what social prescribers are dealing with i.e., grief
The social prescribing ecosystem now includes new relationships with creative catalysts within two of our placed based partnerships. The possibilities of how the creative catalyst can support the social prescribing team have been defined.
The health lens of a catalyst role has been costed per role and we highly recommend that the place based creative catalyst role is enhanced to include the possibilities of a health based lens.
Although this microtest was for a six month period, new relationships were forming and new knowledge was just beginning to be shared.
Next steps: This timeframe is insufficient to see the fuller benefits to the community. Further funding would be required to provide sustainable creative community based activities.