Midlands Creative Health Innovation:
Event Highlights from the MAC
Published 30/04/25
On 25th April 2025, the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) hosted a dynamic event showcasing the incredible breadth of creative health initiatives flourishing across Birmingham and the wider Midlands. A series of presentations revealed how organisations, public health teams, researchers, and artists are embedding creativity at the heart of health and wellbeing strategies.
Here’s a round-up of the key insights:
Setting the Scene: Creative Synthesist’s Midlands Journey
Representing Creative Synthesist, I opened the event by sharing my work as a Creative Health Associate with the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH). I announced the upcoming Midlands Impact Report, highlighted key resources, including my forthcoming Routledge book, and explained that I will continue advancing this work in a freelance capacity through Creative Synthesist.
Photo by Kathleen Wright: Jane presents at MAC's creative health event
​Building a Framework for Change: Birmingham City Council
Alex Robinson, Public Health Officer at Birmingham City Council, shared how their system-based creative health programme is strengthening Birmingham’s evidence base. Alex outlined the development of a creative health framework focused on governance, evaluation, and sustainability — including commissioning arts organisations to deliver public health outcomes. Exciting next steps include storytelling projects, Art Therapists UK training, and the upcoming Healing Arts Week with the World Health Organisation.
Preserving Stories, Shaping Futures: Birmingham Museums Trust
Sophie Beckett, Public Health Research Officer, presented her research exploring how oral histories can support health improvement. Her projects ranged from cataloguing historical videos of food habits to integrating these into ESOL lessons, developing public health mapping tools, and adapting traditional English dietary advice to multicultural cuisines. Her work demonstrates the power of history in shaping contemporary health interventions.
Immersive Health Experiences: Ikon Gallery
Regan McDonald, also a Public Health Research Officer, creatively reimagined public health education through a series of experiential installations at Ikon Gallery. His exhibits invited visitors to move through different health topics, including breastfeeding, involuntary long-term hospital admission, green spaces, diverse representation in medical imagery, and more. Regan blended traditional evaluation methods with creative techniques, making public health both accessible and emotionally resonant.
Structuring Creative Health: Birmingham Hippodrome
Jay Rowe developed the ‘Creative Health Partnerships Framework,’ breaking down factors that influence the impact of creative health interventions using six acronym-based models. His detailed framework offers a valuable tool for anyone aiming to build strategic, evidence-informed creative health initiatives. I highly recommend you check it out!
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Measuring Impact Through Movement and Music: Midlands Arts Centre
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Kathleen Wright’s research into MAC’s music and movement programmes demonstrated tangible health benefits for adults and young people alike. Including how Dance & Music performances can be used as a Public Health creative communication tool to promote positive health and wellbeing behaviours, such as Children's sleep hygiene. Using tools like the UCL Creative Wellbeing Measures Toolkit and storytelling methods such as 'Most Significant Change,' MAC now has a detailed evaluation report covering July 2024–January 2025.
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Widening Access to Creativity: MAC’s Community Engagement
Julienne Mwanza highlighted MAC’s work in tackling inequalities through initiatives like Culture Club (for isolated older adults), Making it Together (a women’s mental health group), and Mac Moms (for carers). With multiple referral pathways, these programmes show how arts can directly support community wellbeing.
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Supporting Grassroots Growth: No.11 Arts
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Laura Breakwell, from No.11 Arts, presented their vision for an ‘Arts Social Prescriber Link Worker’ model, bridging the gap between creative grassroots organisations and the social prescribing system. Their new arts-specific referral form is an exciting step towards formalising arts offers within health and social care.
No.11 Arts was born from the success of Birmingham’s Local Arts Forums (LAFs), which were originally established by the Birmingham City Council Arts Team in 2011. These grassroots networks grew into vital hubs of local cultural activity, and No.11 Arts now serves as the umbrella organisation, amplifying their impact and pursuing shared strategic opportunities.
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Dance and Health Synergy: People Dancing
Yael Owen and Emma Baxter introduced the Health & Wellbeing Through Dance Network and shared Dancing the Way – Finding Flow, a film celebrating Dance for Parkinson’s work. Their network is supporting dancers to deliver health-focused practice across the UK.
Systems Change in Action: Aesop’s Dance to Health
Closing the event, Anna from Aesop discussed the paradigm shift needed for creative health to fully embed into health systems. Reflecting on Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, she emphasised moving towards ‘open will’ — letting go of old models and embracing co-creation. Dance to Health, Aesop’s flagship programme combining dance with evidence-based falls prevention, is already modelling this approach.
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Final Thoughts
The day was a powerful reminder of how creativity, research, and community energy are reshaping health and wellbeing across the Midlands. Together, we are building not only projects but sustainable systems that centre humanity, imagination, and care.