Nursing Special Interest Group for Creative Health
Why a Nursing and Creative Health SIG?
Nursing in the 21st century faces major challenges: workforce pressures, health inequalities, and the need for compassionate, person-centred care. Creative Health — integrating arts, creativity, and culture into practice — offers powerful solutions to improve wellbeing for patients, colleagues, and communities.
The National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) provides the Secretariat for the SIG. The Nursing SIG is co-lead by Marion Lynch (Art of Nursing) and Vicky Ridgway, and the SIG works in partnership with the Foundation of Nursing Studies (FoNS).
The SIG recently hosted a Launch Webinar - What is creative health and how are nurses involved?
SIG co-leads Dr Marion Lynch and Professor Vicky Ridgway were joined in conversation with nurses and organisations leading on creative health practice, education and research. Watch here https://youtu.be/BfYCZJByZEQ?si=5NhFo4lCVz4bQfdk
Nursing SIG Terms of Reference (ToR)
Our Vision
To advocate and educate for Creative Health as an essential part of modern nursing
Our Aims
- Educate nurses, nursing associates and nursing students on the benefits of creative health for self and others.
- Educate creative health practitioners on the roles and ways of knowing in nursing that align with creative health.
- Develop a strategy to enable nurses to have opportunities to learn and practice creative health.
- Develop a forum where ideas and innovations can be nurtured and developed.
- Transform culture and practice: embed person-centred, holistic care supported by creative education, supervision, and reflection.
- Advance scholarship and practice: build evidence and align strategies across all scopes of practice, the NMC Code, neighbourhood health models, social prescribing, community health workers, Core25 approaches, and ICB Creative Health strategies.
Our Objectives
We will work collectively to:
- Equip nurses with advanced theoretical and applied knowledge of Creative Health.
- Enable nurses to lead Creative Health strategies within community, acute, and global health contexts.
- Embed the four pillars of advanced practice (practice, education, leadership, research) into nursing education and professional development.
- Strengthen cultural, relational, and reflective capacities of nurses.
- Develop professional skills and culture to work in unison with the Creative Health movement, embedding creativity into the core of nursing.
Year One Priorities (2025–2026)
- Recruit 20 active members and 80 more interested members via NCCH systems.
- Pilot integration of creative approaches in FoNS programmes.
- Host an Education Summit, Exhibition of Creativity, and Celebration Event in partnership with nursing and arts stakeholders.
- Develop a year-long on line programme of learning, including a range of Webinars
- Launch an online network map of Creative Health projects.
- Provide a briefing to the RCN and DHSC, following on from NCCH contribution to Nursing and Midwifery Strategy Consultation, and to APPG on SIG role/outputs.
Membership
Open to all nurses (including retired nurses) and nursing students, with collaboration welcomed from health professionals including those representing nursing teams or working with nurses/nursing education, and those with a background in nursing or clinical training. We are an inclusive group — whether you’re already using creativity in your practice or just curious to learn more. Together, we can promote wellbeing, lead culture change, and build a nursing profession that is creative, compassionate, and fit for the future.
If you would like to become a member of the Nursing SIG please sign up here to be added to the Nursing SIG Membership and receive the network emails and information >>
We do monitor those signing up to the Nursing SIG, so the membership scope and remit stay relevant to nursing professional practice.
Find out more about who is in our Nursing SIG with our Nursing SIG Network map >>
