3. Collective data confidence for arts and health

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.   

In this third micro-test we looked how can we positively impact the data confidence of arts and health delivery partners? So the participants feel empowered to measure impact?

Off we Go - measuring impact

In 2022 CG were one of 5 arts and community organisations in the Berkeley Vale area that partnered with the NHS to run a series of creative workshops. The goal was to help people reconnect with their communities after the pandemic. You can read more about Off we Go here.

The programme had a great impact on the local community. So much so that in 2023 the partners decided to use the small budget that remained to devise and run a second set of activities. As part of this project we tested collecting data with the partner organisations so that we could begin to understand the impact of the programmes they were running.

Our Vision for this test is: Data with, by and for arts and health participants.

This took shape in 2 ways:

1) The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale - (WEBWMS) analysis

2) Ripple Effects Mapping

WEBWMS analysis

"The ‘Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scales’ were developed to enable the measuring of mental wellbeing in the general population and the evaluation of projects, programmes and policies which aim to improve mental wellbeing. The 14-item scale WEMWBS has 5 response categories, summed to provide a single score. The items are all worded positively and cover both feeling and functioning aspects of mental wellbeing, thereby making the concept more accessible. The scale has been widely used nationally and internationally for monitoring, evaluating projects and programmes and investigating the determinants of mental wellbeing."- Prof Sarah Stewart-Brown

For the Off we Go project we looked to use the WEMWB scales to capture data about from the participants both before and after the activity session.

Ripple Mapping

We also wanted to capture the wider effects of the programme. We hosted a session with all the delivery partners to collectively create a map of any significant events that occurred in the run up, during and after the programme. The image below is of the Ripple map that was created using marker pens, post it notes and lots of brown paper to draw out the story of what the impact has had beyond the delivery of the programme.