Cura: The case for institutionalizing health and well-being in the arts & culture sector.

A convergent body of evidence from clinical trials, epidemiological cohort studies, mechanistic science and emerging economic analysis demonstrates that arts and cultural engagement is a meaningful determinant of health. Yet the organisational infrastructure of arts and cultural institutions has not kept up with this science. Drawing on the historical example of how education became a permanent institutional vertical in arts and cultural organisations during the twentieth century, this paper argues that the evidence base for arts and health now meets a reasonable threshold for a parallel structural change: the creation within arts and cultural organisations of a permanent, staffed and resourced health and well-being vertical. The argument is normative in its institutional commitments, but deliberately pluralist in form.