Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the use of art-based activities in preventing and curing (a) physical and (b) mental ill health.

We believe that arts-based activity can have a significant role in improving health and wellbeing of citizens.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has previously commissioned research to develop the evidence base on the social and wellbeing impacts of cultural engagement, including on mental health conditions such as clinical depression. Research commissioned from the London School of Economics published in 2015 showed that people who engaged in the arts as an audience member were 5.4% more likely to report good health than non-participants.