Creativity and Wellbeing Week: Research Highlighting the Power of Creative Health in Leeds

Coinciding with Creativity and Wellbeing Week (19-25 May 2025), Leeds Arts Health and Wellbeing Network (LAHWN) has launched its new Creative Health in Leeds report. The research was funded by Leeds City Council Culture Programmes Team as part of the legacy planning from LEEDS2023.

Commissioned by LAHWN and delivered in partnership with Voluntary Action Leeds and Forum Central, the report captures years of learning, innovation, and collaboration across the city’s creative health sector. It offers a comprehensive snapshot of activity, from neighbourhood arts projects to large-scale partnerships between cultural and health institutions, showcasing the sector’s diversity, reach, and evolution.

This year’s Creativity and Wellbeing Week, led by the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance  (CHWA) and London Arts and Health, invites curiosity and listening under the theme New Horizons. It’s an ideal moment to reflect on Leeds’ creative health journey and its national significance.

Leeds at the forefront

Leeds is not only embracing creative health but actively shaping its future. By connecting practitioners, health professionals, commissioners, and communities, the city is helping define what a creative, connected approach to wellbeing looks like.

Highlights from the report include:

• A wide-ranging map of creative health organisations and practitioners in Leeds.
• Stories from community projects, social prescribing programmes, and arts-in-healthcare settings.
• Reflections on the role of collaboration, place-based working, and inclusivity in creative health practice.
• Insights into what’s working, what’s emerging, and what’s needed to sustain and grow the sector.

Fran Coard, Creative Development Manager at LAHWN reflects on the research:

“Leeds has an amazing eco-system of creative health activity in Leeds. From grassroots activities through to national arts organisations, creative wellbeing activities on offer in Leeds play a huge role in creating and maintaining health for Leeds residents. But this work is not always recognised and celebrated. We want this report to shine a light on the invaluable and transformative contributions these activities make in our city.

This Creativity and Wellbeing Week the theme is New Horizons in Creative Health. There is growing national and regional policy interest in this work, and our report outlines the fantastic work already taking place in Leeds and sets out our vision and recommendations for how Creative Health can become more integrated into the wider health system and steps we can take support the sustainability of our creative health offer.

Through this we will achieve our vision that Arts and Creativity support Leeds to be a healthy city, where people who are the poorest improve their health the fastest. We truly believe that these approaches have the power to change lives.”

Celebrate with Us

During Creativity and Wellbeing Week, LAHWN and partners across the city will be sharing stories from the report that spotlight the people and projects making a difference. We would love to hear your reflections on the report and we are asking our wider partners to make short video responses and share them on social media, tagging LAHWN, Voluntary Action Leeds and Forum Central.

Explore the full report and learn how Leeds is championing creative health at: Creative Health in Leeds report

Find out more about the national Creativity and Wellbeing Week programme here: Creativity and Wellbeing Week