‘Creativity is key to a healthy childhood’

What’s the first thing you think about when you hear “healthy child”? For most its physical activity, healthy eating, maybe at a stretch some yoga or mindfulness. The healthy child conjures up images of fresh fruit and water, smiling children on bikes or racetracks.

Absent from these images for most are the ‘creative child’: the one painting, the one role playing, the one writing stories. These thoughts do not spring to mind when we think of a healthy child.

But they should.

Research confirms that access to the arts aids health and wellbeing. The rise of ‘arts on prescription’ shows strong links between arts and health particularly in respect to combatting depression and anxiety.

Therapeutic art groups are not new and demonstrate clear positive outcomes. These services provide valuable and meaningful benefits to participants that clearly make a difference to their health and wellbeing.

However, more often than not, referral into these services comes at the point when a professional advocate has identified that support is needed. My question is, why wait to use creativity as a healer rather than a prevention for poor mental health?

Travelling Light Theatre Company offers creative provision in Barton Hill

I have been working in children and youth arts for a decade and have had the joy of seeing the vast benefits that being involved with the arts brings for hundreds, if not thousands, of young people. Performing arts is just one avenue that demonstrates the good that creativity brings to a child. I currently work as director of participation for Travelling Light Theatre Company and this is the journey I observe year on year:

Young people gather backstage. The energy borders on manic. The young people giggle, they start pushing and pulling each other, a few are holding scripts and muttering lines under their breath. You hear “test me on my lines”, “OMG I’m scared”, “I messed up the run through”, “my mum’s in tonight” and “ahhh my boyfriend’s here, he said he wasn’t coming”.

Inevitably, someone cries and you witness moments of tenderness: “you’ll be brilliant, honestly”. There are young people pinning each other’s hair, altering their costumes, holding hands way after it was socially acceptable to do so in the playground.

The end of a performance, the young people take a bow and the energy shifts. There are high fives, hugs, laughter, elation. There may be moments of doubt, but these are followed by positive reinforcements organically gifted from peers.

These moments of belonging, of unified aim are priceless. This process of a few hours stays with that young person for years, but this part of the journey is only the tip of the iceberg.

The journey begins the moment they walk through the door of a rehearsal room and enter a world where their thoughts and feelings are welcomed, supported and explored. Travelling Light Theatre Company is a devising company and young people in our participatory programme follow this method of creation.

Each young person brings their personal experiences and views to the room as creative stimulus. Week on week young people learn from one another, they fall out, they make up, they disagree. They exercise their empathy by trying on other’s shoes (physically and metaphorically) and they form unlikely alliances by being thrown into the character trajectory of someone that is not themselves.

Travelling Light are seeing less provision for creative opportunities for children and young people, writes Sarah Bentley

We’ve all heard that engaging in the arts can build confidence and it surely does, not only confidence in themselves but confidence in those around them who build them up.

In a more functional way it encourages skills in public speaking and teamwork both transferable to the future work place. But beyond this are the benefits to the health of the child. Confidence is great but confidence can be shattered in a heartbeat. The true beauty of engaging with a creative outlet is self-exploration, self-expression, critical thinking and expansion of the world view.

Look a bit closer and you’ll find the liberation that comes from having the permission to try things and the permission to fail. To explore different ways to solve a problem, to make something and screw it up and start over, to have someone else’s ideas celebrated above your own, to be collaborative – also known as resilience.

In a world of increasing pressures on children and young people’s mental health, be it exams, social media, the ticking time bomb of climate change – if there is one thing our young people need to be armed with to meet and overcome their challenges, it’s resilience.

The groups we work with are based in an area of deprivation, their sessions are free or heavily subsidised. They receive free food if taking part during school holidays as, in the absence of free school meals, many would go hungry. They are aged four and above and they harness such creativity that it would be unfair to the future to not unlock it and empower them to use it.

But reaching these children needs investment. We know that many areas similar to ours do not have access to provision such as this and while there are always opportunities out there for those with the resources to access them, what happens for those who don’t?

Widespread cuts to the arts mean that outreach and engagement work by arts organisations is being battered and the ones losing out are the ones we should be prioritising.

It is not news that creativity in the school day is shrinking for today’s children and young people. GCSE arts subject take up is dropping year on year and that this is accelerating due to the prioritisation of the core subjects. In addition, school budget cuts mean there are less resources to bring in professional touring theatre, artists or workshops like those offered by Travelling Light.

This means children miss out on opportunities to explore who they are and unleash their creative, playful and curious selves.

A social worker friend recently commented to me that she observed a creative therapy session as part of her work. I remarked how brilliant it was that services like that still exist, but she pointed out that, actually, it was really sad that the first time this young person was experiencing creative provision was at the moment they were in crisis.

If we know that creativity benefits our children’s health we shouldn’t be waiting until they are breaking before we give it to them. We should be enriching them with physical activity, healthy food and creativity to make them healthy.

Travelling Light have launched the Yes Let’s Appeal to raise funds to support and protect childhood creativity in Barton Hill, Bristol and beyond.

Georgina Densley is director of participation at Travelling Light Theatre Company

Support the appeal at www.travellinglighttheatre.org.uk/support-us/campaigns/yes-lets-appeal

Photos from Travelling Light Theatre Company.

Read more: New appeal raising funds for childhood creativity