Arts and health: commissioning bodies need to be on-side

If the arts are to be introduced into mainstream care, then funders need to be persuaded that investment in the arts will prove more effective than the current allocation of funds, a report on a recent seminar held by The Rayne Foundation and the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing has stated. Arts organisations and practitioners need to get better at targeting the right funding bodies, using the correct message and language. Other key issues include a weakness in project monitoring and evaluation, and a quality gap which suggests further training and development, and resource sharing are needed.

The report, ‘Sustaining the Note of Hope’, gives an overview of the current place of music in dementia care, identifies ‘hot topics’, shares lessons learned from recent projects, and provides suggestions and resources that can further the cause of integrating the arts in dementia care. While there is currently no “clear pathway” for funding the arts in health care, it advocates a mixed funding model, from a range of statutory and non-profit bodies. In an outcome-based commissioning system that often boils down to how many people can be kept out of hospitals and care homes, it is essential that arts providers “think carefully about the stage of dementia at which they believe their input would be most effective, identify the relevant funding streams and decision makers, and plan their approach”. The report argues that the multiple and mutual benefits of using music in dementia care lead to a ‘virtuous circle’ – a recurring cycle of events, in which each event increases the beneficial effect of the next – where the starting point is either an ‘arts push’, ‘health pull’ or ‘carer pull’, and this could offer a potentially useful framework for future projects.

It is predicted that 1 in 3 people over 65 will develop dementia and societal costs already far outstrip those of cancer, heart disease and stroke in the UK. Music has been shown to stimulate multiple neural pathways and boost responses in numerous ways: researchers at Plymouth University have shown how the everyday memory of patients with early dementia can be improved through work with rhythm, tunes and lyrics.