Community Assets and the 10-Year Health Plan Webinar: Event Summary
On 13 November 2025, Mobilising Community Assets (MCA) To Tackle Health Inequalities Programme, in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH), hosted a webinar titled Community Assets and the 10 Year Health Plan. The event, which ran from 2pm to 3:30pm GMT, brought together participants from across the health, creative, academic and community sectors to explore the implications of the Government’s newly released Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England.
The webinar examined the relevance of the Mobilising Community Assets (MCA) To Tackle Health Inequalities Programme in the evolving landscape of UK healthcare and reflected on the foresight demonstrated across MCA and NCCH initiatives in relation to the government’s plan.
Following an introduction from the MCA team, Alex Coulter, Director of the NCCH, delivered a presentation outlining the NCCH’s mission and work since its launch in March 2021. She highlighted the organisation’s efforts to embed Creative Health across national systems through programmes such as the Creative Health Hubs, the Creative Health Toolkit, the Baring Foundation–funded NCCH Huddles, and the Arts Council England–funded Creative Health Associates Programme, which placed Creative Health Associates in every NHS region until March 2025. Alex Coulter also summarised the NCCH’s recent policy activities, including the Creative Health Review and its role in supporting the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Creative Health.
The second presentation was delivered by Linda Thomson, Senior Research Fellow in Health Inequalities for the Mobilising Community Assets programme. She shared insights from the AHRC/UKRI-funded research led by UCL’s Culture-Nature-Health Research Group, outlining how community assets—including museums, libraries, creative and community organisations, and blue and green spaces—can help to address health inequalities and be strategically integrated into health systems to support population wellbeing.
The presentations were followed by a Q&A session that allowed attendees to discuss the 10-year Health Plan’s ambitions, ask questions and explore opportunities for collaboration.
About the MCA and the NCCH
The National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) launched in March 2021. NCCH’s mission is to: advance good practice and research, influence policy and promote collaboration, helping foster the conditions for creative health to be integral to health and social care and wider systems. NCCH defines Creative Health as creative approaches and activities which have benefits for our health and wellbeing. Activities can include visual and performing arts, crafts, film, literature, cooking and creative activities in nature, such as gardening; approaches may involve creative and innovative ways to approach health and care services, co-production, education and workforce development. The NCCH worked in partnership with NHS England to develop the Creative Health Hubs programme with Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) in England and worked with four systems to develop a Creative Health Toolkit to support other ICSs to embed creative health at a systems level. The Arts Council England funded Creative Health Associates Programme built on the work with ICSs. Seven Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), one in each NHS region, hosted a Creative Health Associate until the end of March 2025. The NCCH Huddles programme was funded by The Baring Foundation and focussed on mental health services and co-production. Huddles are experimental, small-scale interventions with a focus on learning. Recent policy work has included the publication of the Creative Health Review in December 2023 and the re-launch of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Creative Health for which NCCH provides the secretariat. The NCCH has a research partnership with the Mobilising Community Assets Programme.
Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities is an AHRC/UKRI-funded, research programme, led by the Culture-Nature-Health Research Group (PI: Prof Helen Chatterjee) at University College London (UCL), in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH). The programme investigates how community assets such as museums, libraries, creative and community organisations, and blue and green spaces can help to address health inequalities and how they can be strategically integrated into healthcare systems to improve population health.
