Creative wellbeing research spans arts participation, making, music, reading, gardening and community creativity. The evidence includes more than 3,000 studies identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) through evidence published through 2019, alongside randomized trials, longitudinal panels and population surveys. Results are promising but not uniform: some studies report wellbeing or social benefits, while others find no clear change or cannot establish causation.
Contents
- How strong is the evidence?
- Creative making and everyday wellbeing
- Arts participation and flourishing
- Creative connection and loneliness
- Mental health, stress and resilience
- Participation and access gaps
How strong is the evidence?
The scale of the research base is substantial. The WHO scoping review, covering evidence published through 2019, identified more than 3,000 studies on arts and health across the life course (WHO, What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being?). That broad evidence base includes many different activities, populations, outcomes and study designs, so its size should not be read as one single effect estimate.
The 2020 DCMS review, Arts engagement and health outcomes, summarized several narrower bodies of evidence. A review of 22 randomized controlled trials found reliable evidence that music and singing can improve adult wellbeing. A systematic review of seven randomized controlled trials found that dance improved wellbeing among young adults aged 15–24. A review of six randomized controlled trials found that music may improve quality of life for people with cancer.
The results vary by condition and intervention. A review of 22 randomized controlled trials found that music may improve emotional wellbeing and quality of life and reduce depression among people with dementia. By contrast, a systematic review of two randomized controlled trials found no clear emotional-wellbeing or quality-of-life change when art therapy was compared with other activities for dementia. The same DCMS review reported that a review of 19 randomized controlled trials found music listening can decrease anxiety, cortisol levels and blood pressure, while a review of 37 studies, including 27 randomized controlled trials, found creative arts therapies can significantly reduce stress.
These findings describe different outcomes, not one universal response to creativity. The DCMS review summarizes underlying studies rather than reanalyzing their raw data. Its evidence also includes associations and observational research, so an observed relationship does not automatically demonstrate that creative activity caused the outcome.
Creative making and everyday wellbeing
The clearest population-level figures for everyday making come from England. In a national sample measured from April 2019 to March 2020, 37.4% of people reported creating arts and crafting during the previous 12 months. The study, Creating arts and crafting positively predicts subjective wellbeing, adjusted its models for demographic and health variables.
In those adjusted England models, creating arts and crafting predicted life satisfaction with a regression coefficient of 0.088. It predicted a sense that life is worthwhile with a coefficient of 0.218, and it predicted happiness with a coefficient of 0.128. The happiness coefficient was comparable to the coefficient for aging one age decile, which was 0.127. These are model coefficients on the study’s measurement scales, not percentage-point changes in happiness.
The models explained 11.2% of the variance in sense-that-life-is-worthwhile scores and 10.6% of the variance in happiness scores after engagement and controls were included. Adding creating-arts-and-crafting engagement explained an extra 0.1% of happiness-score variance beyond the other predictors. The same engagement measure did not add significant predictive power for anxiety (p=0.108) or loneliness (p=0.805). This combination of positive and null findings is important: creative making was linked with selected positive wellbeing measures, but not every outcome.
The DCMS review also cited a survey of about 37,000 adults that linked crafting activity with enhanced wellbeing. Because this is a survey finding summarized in a 2020 review, it should be read as an association rather than proof that crafting alone produced the reported wellbeing.
During April–September 2020, a U.S. fixed-effects panel followed 3,725 adults through five months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In that panel, increased gardening time was associated with lower depressive and anxiety symptoms and higher life satisfaction. Increased time doing woodwork or DIY was associated with higher life satisfaction, as was increased time doing arts and crafts. These results concern changes within the panel during a specific pandemic period and should not be generalized automatically to every setting.
Arts participation and flourishing
Research on young adults provides some quantified links between frequency and flourishing. In a longitudinal U.S. panel of 3,333 young adults, the baseline distribution of organized art, music or theater engagement was 74% with no engagement, 9% monthly, 11% weekly and 6% daily. The analysis used fixed-effects models across panel waves, so the estimates describe changes associated with changing engagement within the study population.
Moving from no arts engagement to weekly engagement was associated with a 0.28-point adjusted increase in flourishing, equivalent to 2.09%. Moving from no engagement to daily engagement was associated with a 0.45-point adjusted increase, equivalent to 3.34%.
The same study reported differences across wellbeing dimensions:
| Engagement change | Adjusted outcome change | Reported equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| No engagement to weekly | Emotional wellbeing +0.06 points | +1.30% |
| No engagement to daily | Psychological wellbeing +0.14 points | +2.71% |
| No engagement to weekly | Social wellbeing +0.16 points | +4.50% |
| No engagement to daily | Social wellbeing +0.22 points | +6.16% |
| Daily engagement, subsequent outcome | Social wellbeing +0.80 points | +22.94% |
The final row is a subsequent association reported after adjustment, not a claim that a daily activity guarantees a 22.94% improvement for an individual. The source population, outcome scales and panel design matter when interpreting every estimate (Longitudinal Associations Between Arts Engagement and Flourishing in Young Adults).
Another large study examined artistic imagination. In a two-wave panel of 27,918 people with a three-year interval, live arts attendance predicted subsequent wellbeing, whereas arts participation did not. In a separate 544-person survey from the same research, respondents reported spending more than four hours engaged with art on the previous day on average. These findings distinguish attendance from participation and use a single-day recall measure for the time estimate (An investigation of the impact of encounters with artistic imagination on well-being).
Creative connection and loneliness
Creative activity can also be studied as a social experience. The UK HEartS Survey included 5,338 adults in 2018–2019. Ninety-seven percent had engaged in at least one arts activity during that period. Among respondents, greater arts engagement was associated with higher wellbeing and social connectedness, and with lower odds of intense social loneliness (Arts engagement trends in the United Kingdom and their mental and social wellbeing implications).
The intervention evidence summarized by the DCMS review includes a meta-analysis of 14 randomized controlled trials, which found that fiction reading improved cognitive processes involved in social interaction. A review of eight randomized controlled trials found a positive effect of creative reading activities on children’s prosocial behaviour. A systematic review of four randomized controlled trials found that community-engaged art programs reduced loneliness and social isolation among adults aged 55 and older.
Duration and setting appear in several social-connection findings. Singing sessions lasting 70–90 minutes increased social closeness and cohesion among healthy adults in quasi-experimental studies, and the same duration increased social closeness and cohesion among people affected by cancer. A 12-week arts-on-prescription randomized trial involving 66 adults with moderate anxiety or depression reported decreased social isolation. Over two years, adults who engaged more in the arts showed increases in volunteering and charitable giving.
At neighborhood level, a cluster randomized trial involving 3,986 adults across 20 matched neighborhood pairs found increased social cohesion and neighborhood “pulling together.” These results cover group programs and shared participation; they do not show that solitary creativity has the same social effect.
Mental health, stress and resilience
The Danish evidence adds longitudinal population estimates. In a Danish cohort observed in 2019–2020, quarterly arts-and-culture engagement was associated with an incident-depression odds ratio of 0.43 compared with never engaging. Engagement at least eight times per year was associated with an incident-depression odds ratio of 0.53. For persistent depression, the corresponding odds ratios were 0.30 for quarterly engagement and 0.26 for engagement at least eight times per year (Engagement with arts and culture activities in the Danish general population). These are observational odds ratios, not randomized treatment effects.
Other studies summarized by the DCMS review report specific groups and interventions. An arts-based social-prescribing randomized trial reported positive outcomes for 78% of adults with moderate anxiety or depression. A randomized trial involving 161 adults with psychosocial issues found improvements in anxiety, quality of life, general-health feelings and general activity ability. A longitudinal study of 2,148 adults aged 50 and older associated cultural engagement with a reduced risk of developing depression. In a bereavement singing study involving 58 people, singing helped prevent increases in depression and decreases in wellbeing and self-esteem.
The limits are equally measurable. The DCMS review identified zero randomized controlled trials showing that arts engagement reduced the incidence of mental illness such as depression or anxiety. That does not erase the reported associations or intervention outcomes; it means incidence prevention had not been demonstrated in the randomized evidence summarized by that 2020 review.
Participation and access gaps
Recent participation statistics show that arts engagement is widespread in England, but not evenly distributed. In April 2024–March 2025, 90.6% of adults engaged with the arts at least once in the previous 12 months, and 89.7% physically engaged. Digital engagement was 35%. Overall engagement rose from 88% in 2021/22 to 91.4% in 2023/24, then fell to 90.6% in 2024/25 (Main report for the Participation Survey, April 2024 to March 2025).
The physical-engagement gap by deprivation was 81% in the most deprived areas versus 95% in the least deprived areas. Digital engagement was 31% in the most deprived areas and 39% in the least deprived areas. Physical engagement was 89% among disabled adults and 91% among non-disabled adults, while it was 92% for women and 88% for men.
Geography also mattered. At ITL2 level in 2024/25, physical arts engagement ranged from 85% in the West Midlands to 95% in North Yorkshire. Digital arts engagement ranged from 29% in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire to 40% in Outer London–South.
Longer-term comparisons use a different definition and period. In the financial year ending 2017, 82.2% of people aged 16 and over in England engaged with or participated in an arts or cultural activity at least three times, according to the Office for National Statistics’ Measuring National Well-being. The threshold of three or more activities means this figure should not be compared directly with the 2024/25 estimate based on at least one engagement.