Building societal resilience and civil preparedness from the community up
Date: 22nd October, 2026
In October 2026, the Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities (MCA) programme and the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee's inquiry into the UK's Article 3 obligations and the Defence Readiness Bill.
Article 3 of the NATO treaty asks member states to build resilience through self-help and mutual aid. Our message to the inquiry is that a country's readiness for crisis rests on its communities, with creative health and community assets part of how that readiness is built.
In this blog we outline our key points.
Resilience is built in peacetime, through trust
Trust in institutions is falling, fewer people are volunteering, and mental ill-health
among young adults is rising. MCA research shows that trusted community leaders
and artists help connect people to services and to each other. These relationships
need to exist before a crisis, rather than in the middle of one.
A healthy population is a prepared population
National resilience depends on good public health and on tackling health
inequalities. Community and creative programmes already reduce pressure on GP
and hospital services, and reach groups that formal services often miss.
We must recognise trusted community partners
We recommend that Local Resilience Forums identify trusted community partners in
peacetime, including cultural, heritage, nature and creative health organisations, and give them a recognised role in local resilience plans, backed by modest, steady funding.
This should be achieved through the lens of partnerships, rather than powers, as trust comes from authenticity, not from the state choosing who speaks for communities.
Co-design crisis messages with communities
A single national booklet will not reach everyone. Messages work best when they are
co-designed with different groups and carried by people communities already trust.
MCA projects show creative methods communicating complex experiences more effectively than traditional reports.
Building the missing middle layer
Cross-government work is not yet reaching the organisations that would deliver
resilience locally. Regional creative health networks, such as those in Staffordshire and West Yorkshire, show how this coordinating layer can work. Creative methods such as forum theatre can also help bring preparedness exercises to the public.
Internationally learning
Finland treats arts and culture as part of its wellbeing system. Poland's arts, library
and youth settings became hubs during both Covid. In Ukraine, WHO/Europe's Healing Arts Ukraine campaign embeds the arts in the wartime health system. The UK has comparable assets but no national mechanism to bring them into preparedness planning.
Next steps
We eagerly await the Defence Committee’s review of evidence. Our full submission will be made available once it has been officially processed.
In the meantime, if you are interested in finding out more about societal resilience and civil preparedness, we recommend watching the recording below, where NCCH’s trustee Nancy Hey, Director of Evidence & Insight, Lloyd's Register Foundation, provides oral evidence to the National Resilience Committee, alongside expert advisors in communications and technology. Watch the recording here
