Making Creative Health Matter Everyday: Why Jayne Howard’s message lands in Plymouth

When Jayne Howard (Programme Manager at the National Centre for Creative Health, and Director of Arts Well in Cornwall) came to help launch the first meeting of the Plymouth Creative Health Network with Plymouth Culture and the Plymouth Wellbeing Hubs Network, she didn’t just present a concept — she offered a workable route from good intentions to everyday practice.

Her core argument is simple and powerful: creative activity is as fundamental to health as exercise and diet — and we should design our systems, places, and habits accordingly. That means embedding creativity in how services are commissioned and delivered, how communities connect, and how each of us looks after ourselves and one another.

Jayne wears two hats. Four days a week she’s Programme Manager at the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH), the charity nudging the NHS and local systems to treat creative activity as routine in health and care. One day a week she leads Arts Well in Cornwall, where she’s spent years turning policy into practice with councils, public health teams and community hubs. That mix - national overview and local mud-on-boots - gave her talk its power and sparked energised collaboration and debate.

She began with something everyone in the room recognised from lockdown: when the world shrank, people reached for creative things. Angela Rippon promoted a weekly series of online ballet classes for the over-55s, Choirmaster Gareth Malone assembled a Great British Home Chorus, the J Paul Getty Museum invited its followers to recreate artworks using three things lying around their houses, there was sourdough and mosaics, knitting and TV art challenges - small acts that steadied the day. The experience and research now backs up what our bodies already knew: making, singing, drawing, cooking and noticing lift mood and protect mental health. “We’ve just never given creativity the everyday, practical status we give to “eat your greens” and “get your steps in” says Jayne.

NCCH’s job is to make creative health normal inside systems that don’t change easily. They do it by working with places and NHS regions, growing partnerships with the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance and universities, and - crucially - bringing people with lived experience into the room with artists and clinicians to redesign services together. She told stories about the “bridging roles” they placed in every NHS England region during last year It sounds simple; it turns out to be system-changing and as a result, further funding may be available to keep and develop those roles ongoing with research and reports coming out of those 12 months.

What was striking was how directly this maps onto Plymouth. We’re a coastal city with a village-like memory: people know each other, or they know someone who does; here a good idea in one neighbourhood can be adapted across the city in a month. Jayne kept returning to place. People don’t live in health silos - they live in communities with bus routes and sea breezes and the same corner shop. That’s why Sea for Yourself’s place-led commissions make sense and why Plymouth Culture’s networks matter: they help the city see itself.

She also gave us permission to be practical. Collaboration between culture and health fails on the unglamorous stuff - information governance, devices, induction. In last year’s NHS placements, they solved that by treating creative-health roles like any other NHS role: honourary contracts, encrypted laptops, the lot. Not because it’s exciting, but because it stops a brilliant project dying on day one when someone can’t get onto Zoom.

The line that stayed with me, though, was about belonging. In one of the city’s wellbeing hubs, a choir rehearsal or a seaside sketch walk, people don’t arrive thinking “I’m managing my risk factors.” They arrive because a friend said come along; because the room is warm and full of new friends; because the tide’s out; because someone will notice if they don’t turn up. That’s creative health working exactly as it should—quietly, weekly, with names learned and next steps held.

By the end of the morning, Jayne had made Plymouth’s path feel obvious. We don’t need to invent a brand-new machine. We need to keep doors open, to collaborate, to measure lightly, and copy shamelessly. We already have the coastline, the venues, the groups and the goodwill. The network is the strategy.

Where to start this week (places to go, things to see)

If this review of Jayne’s talk has nudged you to try something - or to help someone else try - here are easy ways to boost your creative health around the city. Think of them as invitations to build a small creative habit, not a once-a-year treat.

Try out dancing! Check out this article we put together as part of the Let’s Dance Plymouth Campaign. Whether you want to embrace the fiery passion of flamenco, the energetic moves of Bhangra, or the hypnotic rhythms of belly dance, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved. Dance is not just about movement; it's a way to connect with history, culture, and community. Plus, it’s a fantastic way to stay active and boost well-being!

Free Creative Workshops for Over-55s How can the sea help us slow down, find calm, and breathe more deeply? That’s the question at the heart of …And Breathe, a new residency project by Cornwall-based participatory filmmaker Megan Roberts, running in Plymouth this autumn as part of Sea for Yourself. Check out the upcoming workshop dates here. They are FREE.

Therapy Through Art, Creation and Performance. Read this article from our Community Reporter, Will Skillington, about Plymouth’s comedy scene and the connections he made through community after emerging from a two-year long dense fog of severe depression. He says “art, performance, and connection have been not only for my recovery but for, excuse the new age terminology, maintaining some kind of spiritual homeostasis.”

Check out what’s on the events programme at Plymouth Sound National Marine Park - everything from Rockpool Safaris to social SUPs and Walk, Talk and Tidy days. 

Go and find the network of 11 Wellbeing Hubs across the city that provide a high quality offer to support residents of all ages to improve their health and wellbeing, develop new life skills, access advice and support and participate in or lead community activities. Run by the voluntary sector, the hubs are welcoming, safe and secure spaces in local neighbourhoods, to meet people from the local community, volunteers and practitioners.  Anyone can drop-in to these buildings and be welcomed by friendly teams, who are there to provide support and advice to meet your needs and interests.

If you try any of the above, tell someone. Tell us. Stories are how good ideas travel across a city—and how a habit becomes a culture.