Seize the chance to boost health and wellbeing
How we view health is changing, and it is opening up possibilities for museums. Changes in health provision are creating …
How we view health is changing, and it is opening up possibilities for museums. Changes in health provision are creating more opportunities, and it is time for museums to seize the initiative.
A body of evidence shows that museums can bring benefits to individual and community health and wellbeing. This is through their role as public forums for debate and learning, their work with specific audiences through targeted programmes, and their contributions to help people make sense of the world and their place within it.
The action research project, Mind, Body, Spirit: How Museums Impact Health and Wellbeing, initiated by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, provides some insights.
Health is increasingly seen as a complex societal issue. Local health issues resonate at a national and global level, with factors such as an ageing population, modern lifestyles and persistent inequalities linked to social and economic deprivation.
Changes to public health in the UK include decentralisation of governance to local authorities, and the new statutory health and wellbeing boards, which play a critical role in identifying and evidencing public health issues.
Museums must be mindful of these, as finding evidence of wider policies, initiatives and practices can lead to fruitful partnerships, networks and new ways of thinking. Understanding how health and wellbeing is organised in the local area is vital to making the right partnerships.
Museums are not places the health sector would naturally turn to, so demonstrating relevance and the range of opportunities they can give the sector is critical.
Collections are core to this work and Mind, Body, Spirit showed that a museum’s size does not matter. Small volunteer-run museums can make a significant contribution to their community’s health and wellbeing.
The health priority to keep older people involved in social activities shaped Encountering the Unexpected, a project that worked with small museums in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. Museums are brilliant at engaging memory, but their collections can also stimulate curiosity and creative thinking.
The museums took their collections out to friendship groups meeting in village halls, residential and care homes, working in partnerships with Age UK and social care services. The sessions achieved high levels of active engagement and enjoyment.
They drew on the museums’ strength of knowing the power of objects, and by focusing the activity and audience, met health and wellbeing needs.
Some collections have more obvious potential links to health issues. Could Nottingham City Museums and Galleries’ John Player & Sons Archive address a contemporary health issue?
In 2008, 39% of the city’s adult population smoked – almost twice the national average (22%). Smoking is a major contributor to Nottingham’s low life expectancy and 99% of 16-year-olds who smoke live in households with one or more smoker.
How can a historic collection reduce this? The museum service, working with Nottingham’s Smoke Free Officer, used the collections with a group of peer mentors. Using striking adverts and packaging produced at a time when the dangers of smoking were not so well known, Nottingham developed resources that would encourage young people to make informed decisions, rather than lecturing them on the dangers of smoking. The peer mentors played a key role in informing the choices.
These examples show what museums can contribute to health and wellbeing. More museums should seize the chance to show what they can do.
Jocelyn Dodd is the director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester
A body of evidence shows that museums can bring benefits to individual and community health and wellbeing. This is through their role as public forums for debate and learning, their work with specific audiences through targeted programmes, and their contributions to help people make sense of the world and their place within it.
The action research project, Mind, Body, Spirit: How Museums Impact Health and Wellbeing, initiated by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, provides some insights.
Health is increasingly seen as a complex societal issue. Local health issues resonate at a national and global level, with factors such as an ageing population, modern lifestyles and persistent inequalities linked to social and economic deprivation.
Changes to public health in the UK include decentralisation of governance to local authorities, and the new statutory health and wellbeing boards, which play a critical role in identifying and evidencing public health issues.
Museums must be mindful of these, as finding evidence of wider policies, initiatives and practices can lead to fruitful partnerships, networks and new ways of thinking. Understanding how health and wellbeing is organised in the local area is vital to making the right partnerships.
Museums are not places the health sector would naturally turn to, so demonstrating relevance and the range of opportunities they can give the sector is critical.
Collections are core to this work and Mind, Body, Spirit showed that a museum’s size does not matter. Small volunteer-run museums can make a significant contribution to their community’s health and wellbeing.
The health priority to keep older people involved in social activities shaped Encountering the Unexpected, a project that worked with small museums in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. Museums are brilliant at engaging memory, but their collections can also stimulate curiosity and creative thinking.
The museums took their collections out to friendship groups meeting in village halls, residential and care homes, working in partnerships with Age UK and social care services. The sessions achieved high levels of active engagement and enjoyment.
They drew on the museums’ strength of knowing the power of objects, and by focusing the activity and audience, met health and wellbeing needs.
Some collections have more obvious potential links to health issues. Could Nottingham City Museums and Galleries’ John Player & Sons Archive address a contemporary health issue?
In 2008, 39% of the city’s adult population smoked – almost twice the national average (22%). Smoking is a major contributor to Nottingham’s low life expectancy and 99% of 16-year-olds who smoke live in households with one or more smoker.
How can a historic collection reduce this? The museum service, working with Nottingham’s Smoke Free Officer, used the collections with a group of peer mentors. Using striking adverts and packaging produced at a time when the dangers of smoking were not so well known, Nottingham developed resources that would encourage young people to make informed decisions, rather than lecturing them on the dangers of smoking. The peer mentors played a key role in informing the choices.
These examples show what museums can contribute to health and wellbeing. More museums should seize the chance to show what they can do.
Jocelyn Dodd is the director of the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester