Colours of Social Prescribing

The health and well-being of people has gained international attention to an extend we haven't seen for long.

According to the National Academy for Social Prescribing in the United Kingdom (UK), it is estimated that almost a fifth of the appointment time at a General Practitioner is spent on non-medical problems - including loneliness, relationship issues, or stress related to money or housing.

The fact that with an ageing society and rising rates of loneliness, we need to address the social factors that influence people’s health.

Social Prescribing Day is an annual celebration of social prescribing. Since 2019, people have taken part of this celebration across the world, highlighting the impact of social prescribing on people and communities.

"Together, we want to raise awareness of what social prescribing is, how it works, and how it changes lives."

- National Academy for Social Prescribing

In 2010, the early days of social prescribing, Julie Ward was active in the Jack Drum Arts, organising activities for people struggling with life.

Jack Drum Arts is a community-based arts organisation, which is based in county Durham in the northeast of England, in one of the places of highest deprivation

A year later, in 2011, when the organisation won a contract running a three-year Social Prescribing Project, Julie and her colleagues were aware of the stigma around prescription, going to the doctors, and at that point of time - things that maybe were looking like being connected with poor mental health.

"By calling this project something very beautiful; ‘Colors’, ‘Life’ – these are positive things – we felt that it would be easier for us to get people to sign up for the program. We reached out."

- Julie Ward

And this was the start of “Color Your Life”.

"At the beginning there was sport on prescription along with arts and culture. Those two things were kind of at the beginning. There was this understanding that if you are in nature, there is a healing process. There is a kind of sanctuary, a space for you to unwind, for you to rediscover things, for you to reflect a little bit."

"Organizations who were working with green spaces, began to be involved in the Social Prescribing Model, calling it Green Prescribing. At the same time, the Blue Prescribing developed and is about water, run by organisations managing water facilities."

"What I think is really interesting is, what happens when you begin to mix those things up, for example, my organization ran some activities called ‘Walking, Talking, Photography’, which took place in the natural environment. People would be walking, they would be talking and they would be with a professional photographer taking photographs. They're learning about photographs, they're having conversations, they're out in the fresh air, in the open space in a guided activity. So, this is an example of bringing together if you like, the 'Arts on Prescription' along with the Green Prescribing."

- Julie Ward

Julie, what would you like to speak out today on Social Prescribing Day?

"I think that policy makers need to stop thinking about things in silos.

This is a really important issue for people involved in and working in arts and culture, particularly because during lockdown, during the pandemic, lots of people rediscovered the importance of culture, the importance of nature in their lives. 

And yet, when the government sets budgets, the culture budget is usually the smallest, and in times of austerity, it is the first budget to be cut, and this is a very short term vision because what does it do? 

It immediately takes away and puts under pressure these human social services that people are relying on in order not to go to the doctor."

"So it's about influencing the policymakers and celebrating the importance of being together in safe spaces, doing activities that make us feel good about ourselves.

People are already benefiting. We don't need to persuade them. They're persuaded, right. They have the experience and maybe it saved their life, hey."

- Julie Ward, poet, theatre maker and politician

This is one of the ways of utilising social prescribing as a pathway to improve health and well-being.

Use the toolkit when implementing Social Prescribing at your community level. It outlines the steps required to introduce a social prescribing scheme to the local context in your community.

Policy-makers and health and social welfare authorities may also find this useful for scaling up social prescribing.

The CultureForHealth Report presents a collection of existing evidence on the positive effect of arts and cultural activities on health and well-being.

This means the report is not limited to a few research questions but seeks to provide a clear indication of the volume of existing literature, the key concepts, focus points and the types of studies that exist.

You can search for health and well-being projects within culture and the arts using the CultureForHealth Map & Database showing cases from European Member States countries.

Or get inspired searching for initiatives in our Inspiration search engine.