Healing Arts Evaluation

Introduction

Healing Arts is the Jameel Arts & Health Lab’s global outreach initiative, developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization. It accelerates international awareness and action on the essential role of the arts in health and wellbeing, and drives intersectoral collaboration to embed creative practice within health systems worldwide. The initiative advances evidence-based, scalable approaches that improve individual and population health across cities, countries, and regions. It convenes cultural and health leaders, practitioners, educators, and policymakers to champion the arts as a vital component of care. Programming spans academic symposia, policy dialogues, capacity-building workshops, and artist commissions.

Scope 

The Healing Arts Global Evaluation provides a comprehensive and adaptable mixed-methods framework for understanding the impact of regional activation strategies Working with on-the-ground teams, the framework can be adapted to culturally specific needs and objectives. This includes generating insights about the state of the arts and health sector and barriers and enablers to embedding arts-based approaches within health, social care, cultural, and community systems within different contexts. It integrates research, policy analysis, and systems mapping to build a robust evidence base and guide strategic scaling.

Grounded in a shared global theory of change, the strategy examines outcomes at multiple levels:

• Individual: experience of the Healing Arts activation; barriers and enablers to engagement
  
• Community: geospatial mapping of arts and health resources and priorities
  
• System: cross-sector collaboration, workforce realities
  
• Global: comparable metrics, trend analysis, and international learning

The evaluation functions as both a research engine and a systems-building tool, enabling regions to identify assets, gaps, and priority areas while contributing to the Global Arts & Health Index - an accessible, open-access platform tracking the global evolution of the field.

Insights and Deliverables

• Global Healing Arts activation survey to generate a consistent data set
• Online, accessible global arts and health index
• Publications related to methodology together with region specific and comprehensive outcomes
• Global map of arts and health activities and activations
• Global coalition of researchers working within arts and health

Project Team

This project is co-led by Dr Nisha Sajnani (JA&HL, NYU Steinhardt), and Katey Warran (JA&HL, University of Edinburgh). The research team consists of members from the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, NYU Steinhardt, and our country partners.

Funding and Support

Support for this project was provided by the Jameel Arts & Health Lab and Culturunners.