Organisations of Hope
Building a creative coalition for health equity in Greater Manchester.
Key people: Dr Simon Parry, Dr Angela Whitecross
Project Partners: NHS Greater Manchester / Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Cartwheel Arts, 42nd Street, Dementia United, Action Together
About the project
Building a Creative Health Coalition
Creative and cultural activities are widely understood to support people’s health and wellbeing. In the Organisations of Hope research project, we identified creative and cultural activities that people do for their health and wellbeing as creative health activities.
Access to creative health activities is enabled by the availability of appropriate spaces, people and materials. In this project, we called these creative health assets. This idea is explained in a short animation we made in English and Urdu that you can view at the bottom of this page.
We tried to understand the features of creative health assets and how they are spread across Greater Manchester. We examined different communities’ access to these assets and what enables or restricts access. We also explored ways that creative health coalitions might be built across sectors, disciplines and communities.
It is exciting to consider how bringing together and rethinking the use of cultural assets in these regions might change health outcomes for their communities.
Professor Helen Chatterjee / AHRC’s Health Inequalities Programme Director
The project developed a collaborative approach to mapping creative health assets across Greater Manchester (2022-2023). Workshops with diverse groups of people who work in the community, health, arts and culture sectors identified community centres, dance clubs, art groups, choirs, parks and other assets across the city region.
We designed a prototype Creative Health Asset Dashboard to help people involved in planning and policy-making understand creative health provision.
We worked closely with Cartwheel Arts to understand more about communities’ access to creative health activities in their local area. We developed a series of creative research workshops for children and young people in schools and for older adults in communities.
Findings from this research have been published in A Hopeful Day storybook.
Artists Stacey Coughlin and Doodlher (Victoria Whitaker) created visual minutes of some of the workshops we held with community groups. These visual minutes give an overview of key findings about creative health assets that people access and what barriers might restrict access. They particularly focus on the experiences of children, young people and older adults.
In 2023, the artist Mahdiyyah Ahmed working with the Horsfall at 42nd Street went on a creative health journey around Greater Manchester producing the artwork, Vibes of Greater Manchester giving an original young person’s perspective on creative health provision across the city.
As part of the project, we held events bringing together communities of practice in creative health including creative workshops, a research café and a symposium.
We wanted to understand the professional development, training, and support needs of Creative Health Practitioners across Greater Manchester (GM), and produced a short report which is informing future provision for the sector.
We produced a short film, We’re still here, aren’t we?, based on our research with communities to support training about creativity and brain health as part of a programme for creative health champions.
We are continuing to work closely with our partners at Greater Manchester Combined Authority, NHS Greater Manchester and other universities from across the region on an ambitious 3-year programme of work (2024-2027) supported by Arts Council England.
The Greater Manchester Creative Health Place Partnership is pioneering new ways of embedding creativity in health and care systems.
Core team
- Dr Simon Parry, Principal Investigator, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, The University of Manchester
- Dr Helen Hawley-Hague, Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, The University of Manchester
- Dr Claire Forbes, School of Environment, Education and Development, The University of Manchester
- Dr Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, King’s College London
- Dr Angela Whitecross, Division of Medical Education, The University of Manchester
- Julie McCarthy, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Greater Manchester Integrated Care
- Hebe Reilly, Cartwheel Arts
- Anne-Marie Nugnes, Creative Manchester
- Matt Hennessey, NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care
Project Partners
Other partners/supporters
Organisations of Hope was funded (2022-2023) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). In 2021, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) established the £26 million Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities investment, which has enabled AHRC to fund several research projects that examine how to scale-up small, local approaches to tackle health inequalities. Organisations of Hope is one of these research projects.
Professor Helen Chatterjee, AHRC’s Health Inequalities Programme Director, remarked on the necessity of these projects for creating a fairer and more equitable society, that they guarantee shared infrastructure and spaces serve the entire community and play their part in addressing inequality.
"It is exciting to consider how bringing together and rethinking the use of cultural assets in these regions might change health outcomes for their communities."
Professor Helen Chatterjee / AHRC’s Health Inequalities Programme Director
University of Manchester Research Institute provided further support to continue the work (2023-2024).
Creative Manchester
The University of Manchester is developing a range of activities to support research into Creativity, Health and Social Care through the Creative Manchester platform.
Create Well
The GM Creative Health Network, provides networking, learning and support to creative practitioners across the health, social care, culture, VCFSE and academic sectors. Find out more and join the network.