Daisy Fancourt

Is art elitist? Is it an occasional preoccupation for people with time, money, education and self-proclaimed taste? Or is it, as this new book argues forcefully, a human necessity, with proven benefits, for all of us? ‘Art’, writes Daisy Fancourt, ‘alongside diet, sleep, exercise and social connections, is the forgotten fifth pillar of health’.

Art Cure compellingly sets out the case that the arts are essential to our wellbeing. It’s tempting to think that while we all know that, say, attending a concert or an exhibition is both enjoyable and, in some way, beneficial – we feel better afterwards – this is an emotional response, with no basis in science. That, according to Fancourt, is definitively not the case: Art Cure explains ‘the astonishing scientific evidence for how arts can improve your health, stave off illness and disease and help you live a longer and fuller life’. Moreover, Fancourt certainly knows of what she speaks. She is Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London, where her primary area of research concentrates on how engagement with the arts affects human health. Interestingly, she hasn’t always been a scientist; she studied music as an undergraduate.

Nor does Fancourt confine herself to any narrow definition of what constitutes art. For her, art extends from ‘classical music to hip hop, ballet to salsa, galleries to graffiti, as well as pottery, soundscapes, interior design, heritage sites, photography, museums, animations, books and films’. It’s a broad church.

This book explains both how engagement with the arts improves our wellbeing and the form those improvements take. Attending arts events – theatre, live music, galleries, etc. – regularly, Fancourt writes, ‘could nearly halve your risk of developing depression over the next ten years’. Likewise, engagement with the arts builds resilience of the brain against the ravages of diseases like dementia. How this happens is a matter of pure science gleaned from our biological markers, our bodies’ reward circuits, stress hormones and neurotransmitters.

The book is divided into chapters that discuss specific ways in which the arts can benefit our well-being. So we have chapters on ‘Arts for brain health’, ‘Arts for movement’, ‘Arts for stress and pain’, and so on. Were any drug to have the same benefits as the arts, ‘it would be revered as an elixir’.

This fascinating and eye-opening book ends with a plea. Given the evidence it sets out for the widespread health benefits of the arts, why is it that increasingly the arts are being marginalised in our societies? We are, Fancourt writes, ‘lapsing into a state of artistic passivity’. We need more, much more, of it, not less. And so say all of us.