Arts on Prescription
Social prescribing and arts referral schemes: how a place is actually arranged, who pays for it, what a ten week course involves, and what the economic claims rest on.
- Creative Health Policy and Reports: What They Are For, and Why They Are Not Evidence
June 13, 2026
A policy report argues for something. A review measures it. Six checks that tell the two apart, and the citation error that outruns every correction.
- Who Pays for Arts on Prescription, and What Happens When the Money Stops
June 11, 2026
Free at the point of use means somebody else is paying, usually on a grant with an end date. Where the money comes from and why schemes keep closing.
- Arts on Prescription: What the Term Means and How a Place Is Arranged
June 7, 2026
Nobody writes a prescription and nothing is dispensed. How a referred place on a creative course works, and where the widely quoted savings figures came from.
- What a Ten Week Arts Course Involves: The Shape of a Scheme, Week by Week
June 5, 2026
Most schemes run 8 to 10 weeks and follow the same arc. What happens in each part of it, including the week most people find hardest.
- Arts on Prescription Around the World: What Is Documented in Each Country
June 2, 2026
Four countries, four ways of organising the same idea, and one recurring trap: quoting a scheme's numbers with another phase's dates attached to them.
- Museum Prescriptions: How Gallery and Museum Schemes Run, and What Has Been Evaluated
June 1, 2026
Object handling, closed sessions, and a building people will be seen entering. How museum schemes run, and where the self reported numbers part company.
- Singing for Lung Health: An Unusually Well Defined Intervention Without a Locked Figure
May 27, 2026
Breath control, posture and a weekly group. What the programmes involve, why they are easier to test than most arts activity, and why no number appears here.
- Does Arts on Prescription Save Money? Following the £216 Back to Its Arithmetic
May 26, 2026
Follow the sums: £42,423 divided by 90 patients, set against £180,000 divided by 500. Where the savings figures came from and what they actually describe.
- How to Get Referred to an Arts Scheme: The Specific Ask That Works
March 31, 2026
Vague requests disappear. The exact wording that gets a call back, who to say it to, and what to do when the honest answer is that nothing exists locally.
- Social Prescribing Explained: What a Link Worker Can and Cannot Arrange
March 30, 2026
Link workers connect people to things that already exist locally. What that means in practice, and why arts is a small corner of a much wider job.
- Reading Arts in Health Research: Effect Sizes, Certainty and Where a Figure Came From
March 27, 2026
Eighty one trials and 5,576 people can still add up to very low certainty. The checks that separate a real arts in health finding from a repeated one.