Arts, Health and Social Change Research Group

Brunel’s Arts, Health and Social Change Research Group investigates how the arts contribute to health, recovery, and human flourishing. We are recognised by the National Centre for Creative Health as one of around twelve specialist research groups advancing the Creative Health agenda in the UK.

About us

• Our work seeks to improve outcomes for people experiencing mental illness, supports the wellbeing of healthcare staff and students, and develops new ways of understanding what creativity can make possible. We are based in a university, but many members also hold clinical roles in the NHS, third sector and cultural organisations. As a result, our research is driven by real-world clinical questions – the complexities that practitioners notice, the challenges services face, and the outcomes that matter to patients – rather than purely abstract academic concerns. Our findings are designed to inform and improve practice.

Our research

Our people

Working with us

Our Research Group lead

Complexity, creativity and health

Developing process-based accounts of how arts practices contribute to change in individuals, teams, organisations and systems.

Methods for complex interventions

Designing and testing approaches such as Living Living Logic Models, tacit knowledge assessment, and mixed-methods designs that can accommodate emergent, arts-based work.

Youth mental health and creative practice

Co-producing measures with young people, evaluating creative programmes, and exploring cross-national variations in policy and context.

Workforce wellbeing and organisational cultures

Examining how creative and arts-informed approaches affect psychological safety, moral injury, and leadership in health and social care.

Ethics, power and global mental health

Bringing critical perspectives to concepts such as resilience, integration and wellbeing in transcultural and humanitarian settings.