Each of our Create Health micro-experiments was designed to shift the system as well as opening up new opportunities for communities and individuals. Although the tests are ongoing we have already learnt the following lessons from the projects so far:
1. Infrastructure matters if we are serious about levelling up - hard and soft
By working together we have found solutions we couldn’t have found alone – ones that are innovative, durable and embedded. It is complex and challenging to support people to stay physically and mentally well and independent who have long term health conditions and mental health issues. Answers are not found in one sector or organisation but in the spaces between.
We need soft infrastructure resourced to listen carefully and spot those individual people and organisations who want to make where they live more creative, equal and prosperous. We develop diverse, generative relationships from which new patterns of working together emerge. We weave these threads together to seed purposeful alliances which, over time, raise and hold funding to commission arts and health activity that meets their needs and ambitions. (Read more in micro-test 2: Place based infrastructure for arts and health)
2. Arts and health lands very differently in different communities.
There will never be one solution to the complex problem of poor health. Each locality is different and working together looks different in each of the communities we support. Some have been less well served than others by the arts and the health sector (Read more in micro-test 4: Levelling up.) And therefore trust arts and health less.
Without any shadow of a doubt, community members are best placed to shape an arts and health offer that is relevant and aligned with the needs and ambitions of their community.
3. Trust takes time - therefore funders need to behave differently
Growing this agency is critical and it compliments NHS England’s personalised care plan. If trust is low it takes very gentle convening. Trust building takes time and can’t be easily programmed into a GANT chart. Funders and commissioners need to trust communities with unrestricted funding without time limits. We need to commission process not outcomes. Current Commissioning models make co -production very tricky.
4. Working together doesn’t just happen.
Our Creative catalyst are on the ground in communities. They listen, notice gaps and opportunities and thread health professionals and social prescribing teams together with education, police, community support structures and organisations, arts organisations, individual artists and others the Creative Catalysts stimulate new creative possibilities. (Read more in micro-test 1: Role of Creative Catalyst in health ecosystem.)