since 2011
Who wants to make staying well in Gloucestershire more creative, more connected and more equal?
Create Health is our home for creativity and wellbeing. We believe a healthy life should be within everyone's reach, and that arts and culture have a big part to play in getting there, especially for the people the health system reaches last.
Where it starts
Back in 2011, as Create Gloucestershire was taking shape, Gordon Scott from Prema asked what felt then like a ludicrous question: what if art was prescribed as routinely as drugs and surgery to prevent and treat illness?
Fifteen years on, that idea has moved from the margins to the heart of how many people think about health, and Create Health is where we grow it in Gloucestershire.
We connect the arts and the health systems so more people can live well, with particular care for the communities who face the steepest barriers to good health. Our approach is rooted in neighbourhoods. Inspired by the economist Elinor Ostrom, we help communities decide for themselves what arts and health support they need, hold a share of the funding, and gather the evidence of what changes. We have learned that lasting change happens when services are shaped with communities.
Where it’s growing
Our current work has three main threads.
Gloucestershire Infrastructure Collaborative
We champion arts and creativity as a foundational part of the infrastructure Read more →
A more diverse creative health workforce
We are working to open up who gets to work in creative health, so the workforce reflects the communities it serves.
Explore Create Talent →Women's Creative Health
Women's Creative Health is our current focus, and the newest of our emerging alliances. It creates a safe, creative space for women to share their real experiences of health and wellbeing. Instead of filling in forms, women use art, culture and creativity to tell their story in their own way, with trauma-informed care that puts safety, dignity and comfort first. There is no judgment here, only listening.
Too often women's health struggles stay hidden, or their experiences fall between systems and go unheard. We look beneath the surface, at loneliness and isolation, at hope and belonging, at where women feel in control of their lives and where they do not. By listening there, we can show health services and leaders what needs to change, and help make care fairer and easier to reach.
Where it came from
Women's Creative Health grows from fifteen years of arts and health work in the county, from the first arts on prescription sessions at Prema Arts Centre to the neighbourhood Creative Alliances we run today. It is part of a story that is now recognised nationally as creative health takes its place across the health system.
How it works
The work grows in phases. In the first phase, women shared their own health journeys with us, supported one to one and in groups. The next phase, a creative exploration into women's health in partnership with Amanah Community CIC, will tell that shared journey more publicly and bring in more women and partners. We believe women are experts in their own lives, and that lasting change happens when women work together.
Beyond our own programmes: A seat at the table for arts and culture
Create Health reaches beyond our own programmes. We also work to make sure creativity and culture have a seat at the table for health and wellbeing across the county. In 2026 we became one of nine voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations who, with NHS Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire County Council, launched the Gloucestershire Infrastructure Collaborative.
As the county's infrastructure organisation for arts and culture, we are representing arts and culture in the partnership, and we are currently contributing to its Capacity Building and Faith and Race working groups. It is built on principles close to our own: shared leadership, strong relationships, and trust in what communities already know.
The collaborative brings the sector together to strengthen the often unseen infrastructure that helps charities, community groups and social enterprises thrive, connecting organisations, sharing skills and resources, supporting volunteers, and acting as a shared voice for the sector.
Find out more about the Gloucestershire Infrastructure Collaborative →
Its ambition is to help people live healthier, more connected lives, to enable communities to shape their own futures, and to see voluntary and community organisations recognised as equal partners in the wider health and wellbeing system.
How this is part of the CG Mix
We start with people's own experiences of health, and keep asking who is not being heard.
We make space for creativity rather than forms, so people can tell their story in their own way.
We work alongside the NHS and partners, sharing power and sharing what we learn.
We help communities decide what arts and health support they need, and hold a share of the funding.
So far…
Gloucestershire Cultural Commissioning Programme
One of only two national pilots of its kind. With NHS Gloucestershire we funded twelve arts and health projects across the county.
Arts on prescription and social prescribing
Connected people living with long term health conditions to creativity, hand in hand with the NHS.
Create Health Venues
Reached vulnerable households with a home delivered and digital arts offer during the pandemic.
Off We Go
Welcomed 358 people to relaxed creative sessions across the Stroud district. For four in ten of them it was their first time doing anything creative.
Healthy Communities Together
Brought partners from health, local government and the voluntary sector together over four years to test a fairer way to tackle health inequality.
Women's Creative Health
Has completed its first phase, listening to women's own health stories through creativity.
Get involved
Could creativity be part of how you work in health? Whether you work in health, in the arts, or somewhere between the two, we would like to hear from you.