Policy

January 2020 marks a year of being in the role of Director for London Arts in Health. New Year is always a good time to reflect and look forward and so I thought I would round up some of what I have learnt a year in as well as what I am looking forward to.

King’s College London and UCL have launched the world’s largest ever study into the impact and scalability of arts interventions on physical and mental health

Arts Council England is collaborating with De Montfort University to track 100 children born in Leicester until they are 25 years old. The Talent25 programme will assess the ongoing impact of activities such as learning music, visiting museums, going to children’s festivals and watching theatre.

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A consortium of university and industry partners led by Nesta will be deliverying a new policy and evidence centre (PEC) as part of the UK's Creative Industries Clusters Programme. The PEC is being designed to support policy decisions relating to the creative industries. Industry partners include the Creative Industries Federation, the British Film Institute, Creative England and Tech Nation.

The consortium also includes:

In a speech at the King’s Fund on 6 November, Matt Hancock focused heavily on the role of creativity and culture in social prescribing and across the health spectrum.

Acknowledging the work of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, he said:

The British Council, Bozar and the European Cultural Foundation have produced a series of recommendations around Brexit, based on a workshop held in late September with over 60 UK and EU leaders from across the creative industries. The recommendations are aimed at the UK government and the EU itself. The workshop focused on questions about mobility, funding and the law.

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The Care Quality Commission has published its annual summary of the State of Care. Tom Trenholm, Chief Executive of the CQC, describes a "story of contrasts" that assesses "both the resilience and the potential vulnerability" of the heath and care sectors, but also describes the risk of 'care injustice'.

The Health Foundation is to establish a new Health and Social Care Sustainability Research Centre to develop long-term thinking about health services in the UK. 

The Centre will provide independent projections, research and analysis with a network of academic partners and expects to provide around £10 million of funding over the next five years through an open and transparent commissioning process in 2019.

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A new review by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation suggests that short-term funding is impacting arts charities' ability to plan. It also points to the fact that statutory grants tend to stay at the same level, and do not keep up with demand for services or inflation. The review suggests that government budget reductions have worsened inequaiity in terms of cultural access across the UK.

The review is based on assessments of 450 grants awarded throgh six different PHF funds. 

The new strategy, launched in August, follows the 2017 Industrial Strategy, and outlines what it describes as the "key foundations of social value: people, places and the public, private and social sectors".

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