Art is Not a Plaster
I’m at a creative health convention in London. There are hundreds of people in the room, all with various interests and roles in art, health and community sectors. We’re gathered to talk, learn and connect in response to the Greater London Authority’s recent commitment to embedding creative health in the Mayor’s Health Inequalities Strategy.
The Mayor’s advisor on public health takes to the stage. He speaks about how recreational and creative activities like painting and singing are scientifically proven to decrease mental health difficulties such as depression and anxiety.
This is the standard framing of creative health and its clear implications: it reduces those pesky ‘bad’ feelings so you can get back to work and be a productive citizen. It helps you to build support networks and lessens pressure on our over-stretched and underfunded National Health Service.
It’s true that art can have tremendous therapeutic benefits on an individual level. I know from both my personal and community practice that creating and sharing artwork can help people process and heal profound trauma and rebuild their lives, confidence and relationships.
But as I sit listening to the usual narrative being repeated by an influential public health advisor, my head droops with disappointment.
Art is not a plaster to contain and conceal the embodied symptoms of a deeply sick societal system. Art is transformative.
Art as Transformation
It’s another day and a different creative health convention, but this time I’m leading a presentation on how art can create the social conditions we need for us all to thrive.
I draw on Mikkel Krause Frantzen’s anti-capitalist politics of depression to outline three guiding principles for transformation:
Collectivise suffering
Mental health issues are not isolated individual experiences but shared struggles, particularly among marginalised groups. Through creating and sharing art, we can connect with one another’s experiences, foster empathy and understand our collective reality. This moves us from feeling alone with our pain to standing in solidarity.
Externalise blame
Mental ill-health is not a personal failing but a result of interpersonal, societal and systemic injustice. Art can make these causes visible and resist narratives that locate blame in the individual. This enables us to recognise the root causes of our suffering and work together to change our material and symbolic conditions.
Communise care
Health and social care are common goods and it is our shared responsibility to ensure they are effective and accessible for all. By creating art together, we can imagine and practice inclusive, equitable spaces for collective care and wellbeing. This opens up the possibility of radically altering current mental health responses and systems.
I sit with this knowledge every time I engage with the creative health sector and witness severely restrictive discourse around the transformative power of art.
Art! Revolution! Now!
It’s hard to reckon with the magnitude of injustice we are experiencing and witnessing on a global scale today. For many in the UK, it is a constant battle to survive each day without adequate social support and infrastructure. For those who are able to organise and rebel, persistent burnout and interpersonal conflict impede our collective efforts to dismantle systems of harm and build life-affirming alternatives.
Every time we create and share art to express our encounters with life and the dreams we envision, we interrupt these patterns of isolation, suppression, depletion and division.
Through art, we not only heal and care for ourselves as individuals, but also extend our capacity to show up for others and nurture mutually caring relationships within our movements.
On top of this, art can be a powerful site of protest. Throughout history, people have utilised diverse artistic mediums to raise awareness of shared struggles and hold harmful institutions, policies and ideologies to account. Artistic expression goes beyond the limits of language, transmitting complex, visceral and moving accounts of people’s viewpoints, experiences, grievances and demands.
Lastly, I want to highlight the crucial role of art in helping us interrogate and imagine beyond the capitalist hellscape we have inherited. Every time we make art, we strengthen our capacity to recognise patterns and experiment with solutions. This supports us to perceive how mental distress and health inequality are shaped by broader structures of harm, and equips us with vital skills needed to envision and build a world where everyone is cared about, and for.