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Anti-Racism and Ethnic Diversity in Creative Health

Anti-Racism and Ethnic Diversity in Creative Health

Anti-Racism and Ethnic Diversity in Creative Health: Addressing Inequality in the Social Movement.

In July 2024, we hosted a roundtable discussion looking at the theme of Anti-Racism and Ethnic Diversity in Creative Health. This event came about in response to the lack of ethnic diversity we noticed in strategic Creative Health spaces and networking events. As we reflected on the types of diversity that exist within our own team, we wanted to better understand how we can become a more inclusive organisation and what our role might be in advocating for inclusion elsewhere in the world of Creative Health.

Chairing the event was Thahmina Begum, an Artist-Researcher and qualified Art Psychotherapist (HCPC, BAAT). She was joined by our four panellists: Jemilea Wisdom-Baako, founder of Writerz and Scribez; Dr Tanisha Spratt, Senior Lecturer in Racism and Health; Mubasshir Ajaz, Head of Health and Communities at West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA); and Helen Harrison, Assistant Director Public Health, Birmingham City Council.

Watch the session here


Barriers to Creative Health Practice
During the discussion, Jemilea explained that many communities have been participating in Creative Health activity, ahead of its formulisation as a term. She added that, whilst we are in a new and exciting phase of developing the Creative Health movement, we need to ensure that there is joint up discussion between sectors and that culturally diverse practitioners, service-users, and health workers are included. She invited us to consider how this new space can become more than just the culmination of the health and culture industries – both of which hold issues with structural and systematic racism. Jemilea then identified barriers for practitioners and service-users, such as education, background, places that you live, what access you have to cultural activity, and the amount of value that is placed on access to culture. Adding to this, Jemilea pointed out that a lot of people from black and ethnic backgrounds come to the arts later in their in their life when they have more money. This highlighted the need for free development programs and arts spaces. Another barrier that Jemilea identified was the time available to ethnically diverse practitioners and how this affects their ability to attend networking and information events:

‘We're so busy firefighting and trying to sustain ourselves with funding, and there's so much work that we're doing on the ground that often what is missed is that we're just trying to survive, and so it's very hard to then find time to be part of the conversations we need to be in.’

Accessibility, in this case, involves paying people to be part of a conversation so that they’re not losing out on contributing to strategy.

Racism and Health Disparities in Ethnically Minoritised Groups
Tanisha added to the conversation by explaining some of the health disparities that are experienced in the UK:

‘We know, for example, that in the UK, black women are four to five times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than white women. We know that people who are racialised as Asian in the UK are two times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Black men are around five times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than white men. These statistics go on and on and on, and one of the things that is really important to think about with this is how we situate this within our political climate.’

Tanisha explained that racism denial only adds to the difficulties of racialised groups, who have to push past the barrier of proving it exists before a response can be considered. She referenced the Sewell report (2021) which suggests that class is a more important consideration than race, yet we see that minoritised groups often find themselves experiencing multiple forms of deprivation and do, therefore, experience disproportionate health inequalities. With this in mind, we were invited to consider the role of Creative Health in responding to barriers to care in the NHS and elsewhere. Tanisha suggested that to do this, we must consider the balance between individual responsibility and systematic injustices which require collective action. Discussing her work, Tanisha also commented on ‘Black Joy’ and how that can improve health outcomes for Black Britons. As an academic, she welcomes more partnerships with Creative Health practitioners and believes this can be a means of attaining institutional support.

The Role of Regional Leaders
Mubasshir said that he believes the role of the WMCA is to collate information on Creative Health, and to spread the message across the region/ government and in connection to their mayor. Through this, they want to make the West Midlands region the lead in Culture and Health. The WMCA has included ‘looking at culture and health’ in their recommendations for how to respond to race-based inequalities, and within that, they are looking at the Creative Arts and Heritage to understand how they can make a difference. Mubasshir commented on the plethora of evidence available, both for the presence of health inequalities and the value of Creative Health, citing one such example:

‘Decision makers within the NHS are interested in the cost to the country and the savings that can be made. The NHS cost savings, from some analysis, show [that savings relating to] creative arts can be up to £168 million per year, just for GPs’.

Mubasshir has ambitions to work with government to shout more loudly about the existence of racism, the impact that creative arts can have, and the disparity of access that exists in the Creative Health space – connecting this agenda to clinical outcomes relating to health disparity. The WMCA have developed a Theory of Change for Creative Health and as it moves out of its infancy it can start to consider which are the right organisations to connect to. One key area that Mubasshir believes we can make quick progress in (thanks to the available evidence) is relating to mental health and wellbeing. He noted that there is a case to be made for greater funding from Integrated Care Boards, Local Authorities, and philanthropic organisations.

Embedding Inclusivity into Creative Health Strategy
Helen discussed the super-diverse nature of Birmingham as a city, whereby huge inequalities and health outcomes are experienced by people in their ethnically minoritized groups. She identified preventable and treatable conditions that are disproportionately impacting people within these groups, including mental health, infant mortality, asthma, heart disease, and cancer. In responding to this, Helen noted:

‘It's not enough to club together all minoritized groups into one, so we’ve started to break that down into more granular details’.

Helen added that the arts have been a very powerful way of enabling Birmingham City Council to do that and to bring about systematic action. As part of this process, smaller arts projects were funded and treated as a proof of concept. After this, the Public Health team were able to develop a more strategic approach, working closely with big arts institutions - where Public Health Research Officers have now been embedded - to take the arts into communities rather than waiting for communities to always come to them. This unique set-up has allowed for quality evaluation of the impact of Creative Health in communities; research that can be used by other Public Health teams to advocate for this type of inclusion-focused, health-promoting work. A consequence of engaging with this work is that the Public Health team is now able to develop their Creative Health strategy, becoming national leaders in this area. This strategy will focus on quality Creative Health outcomes at the hyper-local level, with a focus on removing reductive silos and demonstrating the value for money of the arts in supporting the health of communities. In this journey, the role of the Public Health team is to guide and support communities, who themselves are empowered to identify the priorities for their locale. Helen also commented on free training that is usually available via Public Health teams, explaining:

‘They often provide a lot of free training out to communities. So, providing things like Mental Health First Aid, and suicide awareness training. In Birmingham, we hold a series of webinars and lunch and learn sessions that are open up to our community members on a range of different topics.’


Audience Insights
Following our panel discussion, our audience members were split into six breakout rooms, where we discussed two prompts:

1. In your own opinion, what are the key ways that we could mitigate inequality in creative health?
2. Who do you think are the key people or organizations who can contribute to the levelling up of underrepresented practitioners, researchers and strategists? and how?

The key take-aways from those discussions was as follows:

  • We need to learn from our communities. We need more community-led interventions and to consider how we encourage communities to engage with this
  • We need to identify who the gatekeepers are to Creative Health, what biases lead to their gatekeeping, and respond with appropriate training
  • Strategies need to be put in place to ensure more diverse Creative Health networks, equitable decision-making around funding, and representation on recruitment boards
  • We want to reduce the experience at conferences where Black people only appear as part of the patient group or entertainment, rather than the expertise
  • Organisations and advocates need to consider what the benefit is for culturally diverse organisations to join the movement, if what they see is a lack of representation and what they experience is a lot of emotional labour in these spaces
  • It is instrumental to consider how research practice leads to inequity – whether it be the costs associated with language translation and payment of lived experience experts, or the lack of policy and financial support available during the planning of research applications where co-design is arguable most important
  • Greater interventions at the school level will get more young people engaged in Creative Health
  • We want less extractive research within communities and more reciprocal relationships
  • Creative methodologies and methods can be used to eliminate hierarchy so that vulnerable groups have autonomy and agency to give what they want on their own terms
  • When choosing organisations to partner with we need to consider more small organisations, rather than prioritising big organisations that have less reach
  • Moreover, these organisations should be embedded within communities, preferably with their own lived experience of facing inequalities
  • Creative Health approaches offer the opportunity to build more trust with communities
  • More organisations need to engage with cultural competency training
  • Communities should be allowed to define what Creative Health means to them and what role they want it to have in their lifestyle
  • We need to be prepared to adjust our language to the preferences of communities, when working with them, rather than prioritising the labels used within strategic, academic, or medical spaces
  • GP’s have a role in opening up the barrier of access to Creative Health, but we must consider their already overburdened workload when we work out how this might be actualised
  • Social Prescribing is a route into communities, allowing us to connect them to the Creative Arts sector more effectively
  • Communities need more access to the discussions taking place in their local Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) to gain access to decision making at a regional level within health
  • We need to consider how we can encourage more collective targeted care
  • We need to consider the place of social justice in our response to mental ill health
  • We need more than tokenistic, tick-box exercises, which serve an organisations reputation more than the interests of the communities we claim to support
  • Organisations can consider what the tangible aspects of their work are, which have a place in supporting minoritised groups. This will be different for different organisations. For example, some of our panellists hold specialist knowledge on funding, so that knowledge sharing would count as a progressive support role

Stakeholders who were identified as being important to progressing anti-racist movement in Creative Health included:

  • Central Government
  • Integrated Care Boards (ICBs)/ Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs)
  • Local Government, including Combined Authorities, Public Health teams, and Culture and Heritage Teams
  • VCSE sector
  • UKRI and the Research Councils
  • NCCH
  • Research teams
  • GPs
  • Link Workers/ Social Prescribers
  • Other senior level leaders


What Next?
Writerz and Scribez are hoping to create a network of creative health organisations that are culturally diverse. You can join the discussion of what this might look like and how it can enable ethnically minoritised groups to have more influence in strategic spaces.

The National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) is working hard to consider what our role will be in progressing an anti-racism agenda, both in the short and long term. The findings of this event will be collated alongside research we are conducting in partnership with UCL. If you have any recommendations that you would like to add to the list above, please get in touch.

Resources from the Panel

Resources from our Audience and Network


About the Midlands Roundtable Series
The Anti-Racism and Ethnic Diversity in Creative Health roundtable was the third of a four-part series of roundtable discussion events showcasing Creative Health leadership in the Midlands and beyond.

To access other event recordings in the series, please visit the NCCH website at www.ncch.org.uk/news and scroll down to our blogs section.

Or visit and subscribe to our dedicated NCCH YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/@nationalcentreforcreativeh3512/playlists

These events and blog records have be organised and written by the Midlands Creative Health Associate, Jane Hearst. To discuss work happening in the Midlands region, email: jane@ncch.org.uk

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