The Impact of Arts on Wellbeing
6 MIN READ
The impact of art extends far beyond aesthetics — it serves as a channel for human connection and healing. In a clinical healthcare setting, art becomes more than merely a backdrop; it transforms into a silent communicator, speaking directly to the human experience of vulnerability, resilience, and hope.
The site specific envirographics that can take me, and specialist teams months (if not years) to create, need to take that time for a reason. Through codesign, collaboration, pause (read, painstaking patience!) and reflection, it’s essential they possess the capacity to transcend traditional boundaries of art and wellbeing through carefully nuanced visual narratives.
The visual narrative becomes an active participant in the healing journey, inviting viewers into conversations that might otherwise remain unspoken.
The images shown in this article depict a very succinct story on the outputs to envirographics; however, the outcomes reach far greater. You’re reading to get an insight into my lens of the impact of arts on wellbeing, so let’s start with language.
Graphic: Key Message #1 - Language
Some of you reading have worked with me, (hi!) and understand my love for language. As a huge component of my work involves communicating with people, the language used throughout needs careful curation to get meaningful results.
When I’m in a classroom full of kids in a codesign workshop, I’m animated and a little extra. I can explain an envirographic is like the contact they cover their school books with, and esoteric stuff that sparks curiosity, like how one summer when I was a kid, I painted the outside dunny with my siblings.
In a meeting with stakeholders, I’m required to demonstrate understanding of strategies I’ve had access to for a short time, in order to align the artwork I’m creating in a transparent way.
Reports also need to be written, and then emails composed to project managers, who have little time spare to appreciate elaborate sentence structure. This is all before the artwork commences, and is scattered throughout for accountability.
Graphic: Key Message #2 - Relationships
As an artist practicing regionally, I focus on how I choose my relationship with being regional, to be a position of advantage.
Case in point: If the information surrounding the impact of the natural world is so profound, and I’m living and breathing it, think of how inherent that is, in my practice if I am to harness it with a positive mindset.
The image shown above depicts an artwork installed as a window etch on a multi-faith space. The coordinator of pastoral care, was moved to tears when she saw it. The local biophilic based visual elements stirred a memory from her past, which she hadn’t thought about in many years.
Graphic: Key Message #3 - Impact
The reality of my practice is, once the artwork is installed in the space, the impact is long lived. It needs to span trends and have an agelessness about it that still feels fresh for short and long term patients, families and staff.
Thankfully, living regionally, clinical users and patients are friends, and I often gain insights into the impact the envirographics are having.
Clinical users are using the envirographics to add to service delivery in helping patients improve mobility, by asking them to explore the narrative.
An adolescent patient I worked with chose to study medicine when she finished school. I was told by a NUM she cited the process of us working together towards something positive, played a part in her decision.
The child shown in the photograph above was a regular patient at this paediatric ward, and his Mum told me he’d look forward to visits to check on his artwork.
Gathering insights into the methods in which art is adding to service delivery, only makes future arts health projects more purposeful as we have the evidence of the impact.
Graphic: A reference image, showcasing evidence based information of the impact of arts on wellbeing.
To summarise:
Evidence on the impact of the arts in health is prolific.
Anthropology has shown in early human history, art, and healing evolved in the same social space;
Florence Nightingale wrote about it in Notes on Nursing in 1859;
The Constitution of the World Health Organisation recognises it; and
The Health and the Arts Framework is recognised across NSW Health Infrastructure projects.
Ultimately, the integration of site specific envirographics into healthcare settings represents a holistic approach — one that recognises the intricate relationship between our physical surroundings, the impact on our emotional state and our capacity for wellbeing.
They create spaces of reflection, empathy, and shared understanding, bridging the clinical nature of healthcare settings with deeply personal, and significant emotional experiences.
Through the lens of the envirographics, we can explore how visual narratives become more than mere observations—they become pathways to healing that challenge our conventional understanding of art's role in wellbeing.
Email me if you’re keen to chew the fat.