Arts and craft and health and wellbeing

Lisa ( Little Bird School of Stitchcraft ) is becoming increasingly involved with the Health and Well-being benefits of Arts and Craft activities, and this has got me thinking. The question is why might Art and Craft be good for us? The production of a tangible 'something special' (often from nothing, or from very little) must generate a feeling of achievement and improve self esteem, that is fairly obvious. But I'd initially like to look at the actual processes of making art and craft, and whether these processes are themselves of benefit to us. My own experiences as a painter and musician certainly indicate this. I feel better when I'm spending at least some of my time in  the broader range of art activities (including music). If, due to other commitments I have to forsake my art activities, I feel less together, less alive even. It is, of course, possible to be creative in almost anything you do. But taking part in activities which have a necessarily high level of creative input, seems, at least to me, to improve our sense of well-being, and I'd like to explore the possible reasons for this.

Repetition and riff

Some Art and Craft activities involve a great deal of rhythmic repetition, knitting for instance, or cutting a block in Printmaking, or even the repeated looking and checking and revising when drawing. It is well known that repeated physical movement can have an hypnotic and positive effect on our minds. When I was (a lot!) younger I used to jog around the streets, not just because it provided much needed exercise, but because it made me feel good mentally. I would go into deep thought when running, and am convinced that while physically taxing, it was mentally relaxing- but not soporific- I felt alert and focussed, not sedated or doped.  I even know people who have coped with extreme grief with the help of the daily jog. I wonder if some of the repeated movements and loose concentration (ie you can think elswhere while you are doing it) that is generated by, for instance, knitting and crochet are directly benefitting our mental wellbeing? Similar feelings are generated by musical repetitions of rhythm and melody- The Rolling Stones, The Fall etc built their songs on hypnotic riffs, perhaps the healing effect of art and craft processes is related to this? Perhaps our minds benefit from a daily dose of rhythm.

Lily concentrating on her leaf painting

Play 
The idea that art and craft activity is a 'play' activity is not a new concept. Children play as a matter of course, adults are generally too busy with their linear, planned, routine activities to take a line for a walk. When I work on a painting, I deliberately avoid overplanning, there has to be an exploratory aspect, an open endedness. You have to leave room in your activity to just play with the materials you are using. Likewise, Lisa will often be making something with knitting or crochet and I will ask what it's going to be, and she will answer 'I'm not quite sure yet, it's evolving in my hands'. This kind of disinterested activity has surely got to be good for us!

 Transcendance

All art and craft activity involves the making of something special. If the process of making has a positive effect on our sense of wellbeing, perhaps the product might also be good for us? This is almost certainly true of great art- I personally experience feelings of, variously: invigoration, completeness, stimulation,absorbtion, elation- and even transcendance when interracting with the art that I like. These can be emotional, intellectual, even physical. Sometimes I have been repulsed or shocked by art work- but even those feelings may also ultimately be 'good for us'. I am not suggesting that art, as a factor in our wellbeing should necessarily be like Mattisse's famous 'comfortable armchair'. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable. Art can wake us up, and being fully awake and alive is surely definitive of wellbeing? Humans need dissonance as well as harmony.

The process of making gives us (like 'play') some essential time out of mind. You tend not to worry about your mortgage or your boss when painting, knitting, or playing a musical instrument. You are drawn into a different place, and too absorbed in what you are doing for the mundanities of the daily grind.

My own field of interest as a practitioner strongly involves the use of colour. I am emotionally, and intellectually immersed in the colours I play with as I paint, and I am sure this process, which is almost celebratory, could help stimulate to my own feelings of well being.

Work in progress

 The making of art and craft (as a practitioner rather than just a spectator) encourages and generates all the feelings described above. There is often some frustration too, making art and craft can be difficult. And what do we get when we overcome difficulty by practice, guile and determination...?

Achievement

So we practice and practice. We knit and crochet, learning as we go, jumping hurdles along the way, and usually, we have a 'thing' at the end of it that we have made with our own hands, eyes, ears etc. The sense of achievement is definitely condusive to mental well being, even if the stitches are a bit wonky, or the painting doesn't quite look right, or the poem is nothing like Larkin's. We made it, and we quite rightly feel good about that! It is almost like humans are made to make. And if they do not find some outlet for this, they feel incomplete.

These hands created this woolly lollipop!

I wonder how much proper, rigorous research has been done in this field. I suspect it might be extremely difficult to prove, in the strictest scientific sense, that art and craft activity is good for our well being, I wince slightly at the thought of some researcher trying to quantify the elated sense of purpose that drives an artist or craftperson. It's a bit like someone picking apart Bach's Chaconne and 'explaining' it in terms of the key change or chord structure. Art is too mysterious to explain in those terms. But I firmly believe it is good for us, based on my own experience. Which is why I think everyone, whatever their age should be encouraged to draw (or similar), just for the process, just for the experience of it.

Little Bird School of Stitchcraft is particpating in Wellbeing Wednesday for the month of October.  Wellbeing Wednesday is a celebration of how taking part in arts and cultural activites can contribute to your wellbeing.  For more information click on the logo below: