‘Arts can help us live longer’: UMass convening highlights growing evidence linking arts to improved health

AMHERST — Pain management through music, addressing the effects of Parkinson’s disease with dance instead of exercise and lowering mortality risks by getting senior citizens out to museums are ways the power of art in health outcomes is continually demonstrated.

“Arts can help us live longer and live more healthfully,” says Jill Sonke, a U.S. cultural policy fellow at Stanford University.

Research continues to show an infusion of arts can promote health and prevent disease, and can even slow down biological aging, Sonke said, and participating in the arts, whether attending a theater production, making pottery or completing a painting, should be seen as no different for one’s well being than the necessities of housing, food and medicine.

“Access to the arts is a social driver of health,” Sonke said. “Arts exist and contribute to our well-being and to collaborate toward our common good.”

Sonke was the keynote speaker at a statewide convening on arts, health and well-being at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Friday. The event was organized by the Fine Arts Center as part of its 50th anniversary season.

Sponsored by the Barr Foundation and Cooley Dickinson Hospital, the event inside the ballroom at the Student Union gave close to 400 participants the opportunity to listen to speakers, participate in question-and-answer sessions and engage in authentic art experiences, as well as to have both breakfast and lunch.

Those in attendance included those from the medical and art communities, along with numerous policymakers at the local, state and federal level.

In Massachusetts, how arts impact health is already supported by the Mass Cultural Council, which in 2023 launched a statewide arts prescription program in partnership with Social RX. That health insurance cohort in the state has shown arts prescriptions to cause 40% fewer emergency room admissions and a 350% reduction in behavioral health inpatient admissions.

Sonke said that multimodal activities are highly efficient, effective and low risk, with arts participation reducing isolation for older adults, and the social cohesion benefiting all individuals. Global data on social prescribing of arts shows that people are happier and there is a return on the investment.

While the Mass Cultural Council is investing in arts support for health, others states are doing similarly, such as in New York City, where seniors will be provided access to regular Broadway shows, and in Georgia with passage of House Resolution 1007, which acknowledges the effectiveness of arts for health initiatives in improving mental health outcomes.

While these benefits are understood at the individual level, Sonke noted an increasing effort to collectivize them. She explained that fostering social cohesion and reducing loneliness can have a health impact equivalent to not smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Sonke said society is actually doing harm if there is no access to the arts, and she is confident that a “seatbelt” moment is coming, similar to what happened in the 1980s when everyone started wearing seatbelts when riding in vehicles. “I believe that moment is before us in arts and health today,” Sonke said.

Fine Arts Center Director Jamilla Deria opened the event, noting that in this 50th anniversary season, the arts should be seen not as supplemental to well-being, but as essential to education and health resiliency.

“Today, we widen the lens because the story of the arts is still being written,” Deria said.

Art for the Common Good, she said, is about bringing together leaders across sectors to explore how to embed the arts more deeply into systems that shape people’s health and lives.

“In short, arts make us whole,” Deria said.

Betsy Cracco, assistant vice chancellor of Campus Life and Wellbeing, referenced the 2022 signing onto the Okanagan Charter, which embeds health into all that is done on campus, with interventions that can be used across the United States.

Such was the case with the Safety, Dignity and Belonging retreat held at the Charles River Campus, with meditation, movement, nature and art making.

As part of the introduction, state Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst, reflected not only on the 133,000 arts-related jobs and $27 billion arts economy in the state, but how in her time as executive director of the Amherst Survival Center she saw firsthand how arts can be a social determinant of health. There, she participated in the Fine Arts Center’s Angel Ticket program, offering free admission to guests so they could attend music, dance and theater.

With attacks on civil rights and history, and anxiety, exhaustion and isolation, Domb said arts can be a resistance to censorship, referencing how Amy Sherald responded to the Smithsonian Museum’s rejection of a piece with the Statue of Liberty represented as a Black trans woman.

“The arts can be the antidote,” Domb said.

For this state, there is already financial support for the intersection of arts and culture, said state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and state leaders recognize the transformative power of art, and that healing happens in hospitals, and beyond.

“In Massachusetts, culture is not a luxury, it’s essential infrastructure for healthy people and healthy communities,” Comerford said

Democratic U.S. Rep. James McGovern held up the Tibetan prayer beads received from the Dalai Lama that he wears on his wrists, designed to reduce fear and worry.

“I’m anxious to see him again to tell him they don’t work,” McGovern said.

But McGovern recalled President John F. Kennedy’s remarks at the October 1963 dedication of the Frost Library at Amherst College about the importance of art and poetry and how they serve to connect people. Yet he said the Trump administration and the GOP leadership have been cruel toward artists, gutting funding for museums, libraries and cultural offerings.

“We must never forget art is not a form of propaganda, art is a form of truth,” McGovern said, adding that education fosters empathy and learning. “We are talking about something that goes to the core of who we are and what we care about.”

UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes said the event represents ongoing efforts to bring the university into the community, and the community into the university.

“We want to make sure we use all the infrastructure of the university is present in all those areas,” Reyes said, adding that the arts are important for bringing people together, referencing the “Building Bridges” exhibition.

The event featured panels throughout the day with speakers including Dr. Robbie Goldstein, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and Eliza Lake, director of Health Policy and Strategic Initiatives.

Aston K. McCullough, assistant professor at Northeastern University, was on a morning panel, “the why and how art affects our health.” McCullough spoke about running a “dance-science laboratory” where he brings arts into the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, and Brooke DiGiovanni Evans , who trains clinicians with art at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, adding that art is no longer an extra.

Emmeline Edwards, neurochemist and advisor and research director for the NeuroArts Blueprint, encourages research for arts to be fully integrated into health policy.

“Artists and scientists are cocreating this world together,” said Jean King, a professor of neuroscience at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.