A visitor to the 2020 summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, exemplifies the intersection of art and public engagement. In a new book, Art Cure, Professor Daisy Fancourt of University College London argues that the arts—from painting to theatre—have a measurable impact on health, urging a reevaluation of their role in society.
Personal and Professional Convergence
Fancourt's own experience with her premature daughter Daphne, who was confined to an incubator, illustrates this connection. Unable to touch her baby, she sang lullabies while dressed in PPE. Studies confirm that singing to babies in intensive care reduces heart rate, improves breathing, and encourages feeding. This moment crystallized her research focus on how social connections and behaviours affect health.
Scientific Case for the Arts
In Art Cure, Fancourt aims to provide rigorous evidence that the arts are deeply entwined with mental and physical wellbeing, from cellular function to cognition and mood. She breaks down artistic interventions into “active ingredients,” akin to a drug cocktail. For example, singing to sick babies combines noise buffering, neurological stimulation, human contact, and stress reduction. These ingredients trigger biological mechanisms that lead to health outcomes, which can be tested and prescribed.
Fancourt debunks miracle cures, such as classical music killing cancer cells, but shows that creative engagement alongside conventional treatment reduces stress and pain, improves balance in Parkinson's disease, and helps ventilator patients breathe independently. Art stimulates the vagus nerve, affecting the heart, facial muscles, and gut, functioning “as a form of beta blocker, Botox and antispasmodic.”
Human Stories and Economic Impact
The book includes human stories: a depressed mother who transforms after joining an “art for wellbeing” class, and a 94-year-old with dementia revived by a recording of Singin’ in the Rain. Fancourt emphasizes broadening medical focus from “What’s the matter with them?” to “What matters to them.”
The economic case is strong: regular arts engagement equates to a £1,500 pay rise in wellbeing, and delaying dementia onset could save the NHS and social care £1.5bn annually. Yet arts funding in UK schools was just £9.40 per pupil in 2022, and government funding for creative degrees was halved in 2021. In the US, 95% of adults reported zero minutes of arts engagement the previous day. Fancourt warns of “artistic passivity” and calls for a “seatbelt moment” recognizing arts deprivation as a public health crisis.
Uncomfortable Questions
The book raises uneasy questions: Does treating art as a means rather than an end risk losing its transcendent power? And what does it mean for society that we must justify art through measurable outcomes? Art Cure does not provide definitive answers but makes a compelling case for broadening medicine to encompass creativity, identity, and purpose as integral to health.
