Social capital | Wellbeing

This thematic area is closely associated to our work on cultural participation and identity, providing a wider social context. Through Impacts 18, we are focusing on one project that explores the emergence of creative healthcare as a distinct approach by a mental health provider in Merseyside and the new types of partnerships between health and art organisations that emerged in the wake of Liverpool as ECoC.

Wellbeing Partnership Legacies

Following on the baseline established by the ICC project Joining the Dots, this project looks into activity led by Mersey Care over the last ten years, involving a community-based programme of mental health interventions in collaboration with a range of cultural partners, including Tate Liverpool, FACT, Everton in the Community and the Liverpool Philharmonic.

Our project charts and assesses these cultural partnerships, established in the wake of Liverpool as ECoC, and their potential impact upon health and wellbeing. This builds on a a number of reports (Shift Happens and Understanding the Benefits for Mr Kite) looking into the role of co-creation in mental health and the best methods by which to evaluate them.

Methodologically, the project involves

• Social Return on Investment (SROI) techniques on a selection of programmes;
• Primary and secondary data gathering and descriptions of the cultural intervention programmes;
• Stakeholder interviews, aimed at understanding how the cultural partnerships programme has changed between 2008-2018 and the effect that austerity has had on funding of such programmes.