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Daisy Fancourt: Epidemiologist on how creativity rewrites your biology and extends your lifespan
00:46:45
Daisy Fancourt's research makes the case that engaging with the arts changes your gene expression, slows your biological aging, reduces your risk of dementia, depression, and chronic pain, and actually helps you live longer.
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- [00:01]
A
We actually see that the effect sizes are as strong or stronger often than other health promoting behaviours we already talk about, like physical activity and like social interaction. Which is why I think it's so important that we are positioning the arts alongside these other pillars of our health that we already discuss.
- [00:22]
B
You probably already know that exercise, sleep, a good diet and spending time in nature are the pillars of a healthy life. But what if there's a fifth pillar we've been undervaluing and in many cases actively actively cutting? Our guest today argues that the arts belong in that category.
- [00:36]
C
Daisy Fancourt is a Professor of Psychology and Epidemiology at University College London, where she heads the Social Biobehavioral Research Group and directs the World Health Organization's Collaborating center on Arts and Health. She's one of the most cited scientists in her field and her work sits at a genuinely unusual intersection the rigorous, data heavy world of epidemiology and the seemingly softer world of creative practice for designers and creative professionals. This conversation raises some genuinely thorny questions about whether creative work counts, what burnout is actually doing to your body, and why the arts budget is always the first thing to cut, even when the data says it probably shouldn't be.
- [01:22]
B
Her new book, Art the Science of How Art Saves Lives, makes a case that's hard to dismiss, that engaging with the arts changes your gene expression, slows your biological aging, reduces your risk of dementia, depression, chronic pain, and actually helps you live longer. She's done the longitudinal studies across 52 countries and she's lived it personally, watching her premature daughter's vitals stabilize in the NICU as she sang to her this is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Wooler.
- [01:51]
C
And I'm Aaron Walter. At Design Better, our primary mission is to produce work that helps people like you refine your craft, improve your collaboration skills, and get inspired by the creative process of others. If you enjoy what we do here, the best way to support us is to become a Premium subscriber@designbetterpodcast.com subscribe. We'll return to the conversation after this quick break. DesignBetter is brought to you by WIX Studio, the platform built for all web creators to design, develop and manage exceptional web projects at scale. Learn more@wix.com studio and now back to the show.
- [02:51]
B
Daisy Fancourt, welcome to Design Better.
- [02:53]
A
It's lovely to be with you.
- [02:55]
B
We're really excited to have you here. I have a copy of your book here, as does Aaron. I only got it recently, so I've just started to dive in, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Looks like you have a few copies on the shelf behind you and maybe alternate cover designs there, the UK cover
- [03:09]
A
and the US cover.
- [03:10]
B
Oh, beautiful.
- [03:11]
C
Oh, nice hit.
- [03:12]
A
Your favorite.
- [03:12]
B
Yeah, I think I like the UK cover better, I have to say, at least from what I can see from here. So I'll have to check that out. So it's really lovely to have you here and I want to just start it off with a story that you tell in the beginning of the book and I'll just kind of do a brief summary. It's not a spoiler because it's right in the first handful of pages, but essentially it tells the story of a man who had a stroke and some other medical symptoms and his doctor prescribed him art therapy. He was quite skeptical. He didn't think this would work. But he started going and he started experiencing these pretty dramatic changes in his health. He was able to go off a lot of his medications and he eventually really kind of took to it and became, at least as a side hobby, a painter. Talk to us about that story. Maybe any gaps that I missed there, as well as maybe some of the research that you started doing around this phenomenon.
- [03:59]
A
I really like this story of Russell because it's such a clear example of the fact that arts engagement is a multimodal activity. It contains so many different psychological, social, physical components to it that all have effects on our health. And as a result, it means that something that sounds very simple like joining a weekly arts class is actually capable of affecting a really broad range of neurological, physiological and behavioral outcomes and almost having a disproportionate level of impact on someone's health and wellbeing in life compared to the sort of small acts of engaging for a small amount of time each week. And it's really a central theme I come back to across the book is about why it is that the arts are capable of this, but also how important it is to recognize that the really tangible and meaningful effects they can have on our health.
- [04:48]
C
Maybe we could level set on what fits into this classification of art. This is the classic question, what is art? But there are lots of different obvious disciplines. There's music, painting, drawing, et cetera. Dance presumably. But what about design or the crafts? What all fits into this bucket in your research?
- [05:09]
A
I talk about this early on in the book because the way that I see it is I take an ingredients based approach. So I recognize that arts practices are typically those that involve creativity and magic, imagination, and often a focus on conveying or expressing emotions and ideas. But within that, there are lots of different art forms that can achieve that. And you've mentioned some of them, but there are others that actually contain those core ingredients, but aren't always called arts. So things like culinary arts like baking, horticultural arts like gardening or flower arranging, some things that are often classed more as sports, like rhythmic gymnastics, for example, or figure skating, but actually contain those core ingredients. And I think it's really important to acknowledge all of those different arts practices because whilst throughout the book I highlight certain times when you need specific art forms to impact particular health outcomes, there are plenty of other examples of quite broad outcomes like mental health and wellbeing that actually can be impacted by all of those different creative pursuits.
- [06:08]
B
You have a very personal connection to this whole arena. Your daughter was born prematurely and was in the nicu, the neonatal intensive care unit, and you were there with her and you sang during that experience. And you feel that it had a really powerful, like, observable impact on the outcome. Maybe tell us a little bit more about that story.
- [06:28]
A
Yes, this was my sort of personal experience of actually seeing firsthand the impact that the arts can have. You know, my daughter Daphne became critically unwell with meningitis when she was a few days old. And we had one of those horrific situations that I know other families have been through as well, of everything being very much on that knife edge. And I really felt so powerless in terms of what I could do. I couldn't even hold her in that time. But I was aware of literature that talked about the impact that singing to premature infants had on them in terms of reducing their stress response, helping to lower their blood pressure, increase their oxygen saturation, and also help with things like feeding, enabling them to take on more calories and maintain weight. They could even leave hospital sooner. And it's an evidence base I'd read kind of scientifically before, But I'll be honest, I never quite believed what a big impact this could have. But actually sitting there singing with her, I could see in real time the changes on the monitors. I could actually see those increases in her oxygen saturation, for example. So I got to witness just how meaningful the arts can be. And I think it's one of the reasons in the book I really wanted to bring all of this really rigorous scientific evidence, but also bring personal stories to it, real life stories of people like me, but also people like Russell that you mentioned earlier, because I think that sometimes those can be really effective, that storytelling and Bringing that science to life.
- [07:48]
C
What's happening in those moments where there's some health challenge and someone's experiencing the arts? What's happening in their nervous system and their body?
- [07:59]
A
An incredible array of effects, to be honest. So let's say that we are listening to a piece of music or reading a book that we enjoy or crafting. When we engage in those activities, we activate regions of the brain, right at the heart of the brain that are crucial to our pleasure response. We engage reward networks like the dopaminergic mesolimbic reward system, which increases levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine that are happy hormones that help us to have that boost in our mood. At the same time, we also engage physiological systems like our stress response system. When we engage in the arts in relaxing arts activities, it can down regulate the activity of our autonomic nervous system, which is that system of nerves that goes across the entire body and controls things like our heart rate and blood pressure. That's why my daughter Daphne had those reductions in their blood pressure, because the calming singing that I was giving to her and was down regulating that stress response. And we see this biologically too, in terms of reductions in stress hormones, reductions in inflammation within the immune system, when people engage in the arts. And inflammation is related very much to both our mental health and our physical health. We also see activation of different regions of the brain, in particular, improved connectivity between brain regions that are vulnerable to things like aging, for example. So we see enhanced cognitive processing, but also actually find that people who engage regularly in the arts have a younger brain age compared to people who don't. And in fact, this concept that arts not only affect us physiologically, but even affect our aging process is something that's coming through in so many studies now. We've actually in my lab, recently shown that people who are more engaged in the arts have different patterns of gene expression, which indicates a slower epigenetic aging process. In other words, they are biologically aging in terms of the way their genes are being expressed. So this incredible array of multi layered physiological responses to something as simple as a few minutes of creative practice.
- [10:00]
C
That's fascinating. And what you're describing, I've heard referenced as phenotypical age. Is that correct?
- [10:05]
A
There are different markers of age. So phenotypical age is one of the terms that we get used. But there are various different biological aging clocks that have now been developed. Some of them focus on more phenotypic clinical biomarkers like your blood pressure, your musculital function, like circulatory biomarkers. Others focus on things like your gene expression, others focus on things like the patterns of proteins that are activated in your body. So there are lots of different ageing clocks essentially being discovered and created now. And we know that lots of other health behaviours influence them. Things like physical activity, for example. So it's really exciting to see that arts engagement is another behaviour that also influences these clocks.
- [10:46]
C
The core tenet of your book is that the arts should be considered the fifth pillar of health. You've sort of outlined that here, but can you take us through that more of like why this is such an important thing for us to consider? I think those of us who are involved in creative pursuits intuitively recognize this, but those who think more analytically might not quite fully understand that.
- [11:13]
A
So over the last few decades we've come to acknowledge certain behaviours we recognise are really fundamental to our human health. Things like physical activity, sleep, healthy diets. What's been quite interesting is seeing how these have emerged. If you look back a few decades, for example, in the 1980s there were still these debates going on about does physical activity have health benefits? Which feels such a bizarre thing now. Like we're so used to that now because there's been such a, see change in public opinion in. There's been such an enormous body of research now. But it's important to recognize there was a time before there was that public awareness. And I talk in the book about this, I call it a seatbelt moment, because seatbelts in cars is another one, right? People never used to wear seatbelts. And then finally there was enough evidence, enough public awareness that it suddenly became this thing that you would never not wear a seatbelt. But I argue that this is exactly the same thing for arts engagements. Over the last few decades we've had such an incredible burgeoning of scientific research coming out, including extremely rigorous large scale studies which has highlighted that arts engagement is another human behavior like physical activity, that has these inherent fundamental health effects. And I think we're also starting to see that sea change now in public awareness about this and the way people are now thinking about the arts and the role they should play in their lives and in society. So I think we're getting to that seatbelt moment, that tipping point of actually recognition that the arts is a pillar of our health. And my prediction in this is that in 10 years time we'll look back and think, well, of course it is a bit like with physical activity, we'll be laughing about the idea that we Ever used to think this wasn't a fundamental part of our health.
- [12:48]
B
So we were talking before recording about our audience and many of them are in a design related field. There are creative elements to their work. This might be hard to tease out because not every part of a designer's job is necessarily creative and they might have other creative pursuits on the side. But are there potentially therapeutic benefits to having a job that involves some amount of creativity?
- [13:10]
A
This is a really thorny question because the truth is the creative elements of the job, yes, there are benefits to that because those same mechanisms I've described, like the cognitive benefits, the physiological benefits, not to mention broader psychological well being benefits that people get from creative activities, those are present in people's jobs. They're getting those through their jobs. However, what we tend to see at a population level is that people who are artists in creative jobs have higher levels of well being than the general population. But they also on average have higher levels of anxiety and depression. And part of the reason for this is that many of those creative jobs do involve some elements of precarity. Lots of people who work in the arts, for example, are freelancers. So they're dealing with uncertainty around the level of work they have, the income they're going to get from it. This is a major risk factor for mental health. This is where you start to see this funny challenge. It's not necessarily about the content of the job that's the problem. It's the structure around how we as societies actually construct the whole world of an artist and also particularly how we value artists. And I talk in the closing chapters of the book about some of the challenges that artists have faced in recent years, like cuts to funding and actually why that's particularly damaging to artists. Because for many people, if they work in a creative profession, that's not just their job, but it's part of their identity. So therefore, when they face those fundamental threats to their work, that actually affects them at a really deep seated level. It's a concept called precaritized mind. This idea that the precarity around things actually starts to have this really deep seated effect. So I'm afraid it's a combination of good news and bad news.
- [14:50]
C
Are there longitudinal studies, like long term studies of the benefits of the arts? There's the famous study, the Harvard study about happiness. And the take home top level headline is that community is so critical to health and well being. Is there anything like that out there where we can look through time and see, okay, here are the key benefits.
- [15:16]
A
This is literally how I spend my day to day, so my area of science is psychobiology, so I focus on the biological and physiological effects, but also epidemiology. So day to day, my team and I work with the biggest cohort studies in the world. We work with longitudinal data from 52 different countries that includes questions on arts engagement and long term health and wellbeing outcomes. And so through these studies, because they're so large and they've got such representative samples and such long term tracking, we've actually been able to show that people who are regularly engaged in arts activities have a reduced risk of developing depression, they have improvements in their well being over time, they have better preservation of their cognition, a reduced risk of developing dementia. They also have a reduced risk of age related problems like chronic pain or frailty amongst young people. They've got a reduced risk of developing behavioural problems or getting involved in criminal antisocial behaviours. They even on average have a longer life expectancy. The common question is, is this about the arts or is it just that people who engage in the arts might be wealthier or demographically different or they might have other patterns?
- [16:23]
C
I can tell you that the people who engage in the arts are not wealthier. I know anecdotally there are a lot of people who are struggling, but it's
- [16:32]
A
important to disentangle these effects, isn't it? And actually, interestingly, what we see is that even when you've taken account of these diverse demographic, behavioral, socioeconomic factors, those relationships I've been describing between arts engagement and long term health outcomes are preserved independent of all of those confounding factors. And again, coming back to that fifth pillar thing I spoke about, we actually see that the effect sizes are as strong or stronger often than other health promoting behaviors we already talk about like physical activity and like social interaction, which is again why I think it's so important that we are positioning the arts alongside these other pillars of our health that we already discuss.
- [17:13]
B
Daisy, I'm not sure if it's the same in the uk, but here in the US often art budgets are the first thing to get cut in primary school and elsewhere. I was just talking with Aaron about a frustrating thing that happened in my son's elementary school where they had this really nice after school program where the kids could do a range of things, many of them art related, painting, making things, baking, that type of thing. And I think it was a great benefit for all and it ended up getting cut, not necessarily because of budget, because of some silly insurance thing. And I don't know all the details. But do you think this research, if it becomes more widespread and well known, could turn that around and we could reinstate some of these programs that have been cut for various reasons?
- [17:53]
A
I think it's really important to have this research to be able to sort of make the economic case for this as well. In fact, I've been working in the UK with our Department for Culture, Media and Sports, and we've now got over 100 epidemiological analyses like the ones I just described, using data from the UK or from comparable countries. And actually we said, well, can we actually put some pound signs on this? So we used the techniques that our government uses for other behaviours. So, for example, improvements in well being. They've got a direct pound figure that they attach to each point improvement in wellbeing, because they know that enhanced well being means that you're functioning differently day to day, like you're able to work more, for example. We also looked at reductions in health and social care usage amongst people and we also looked at productivity. So if arts engagement improves all of these health outcomes, what's the impact financially for wellbeing, health service utilisation and productivity? We found that in the uk, amongst working age adults alone, current rates of arts engagements are worth 18.6 billion pounds a year to UK society. So this is major returns on investment with arts budgets. In fact, Wales has actually just done their own specific analysis using our work, and they've shown that they spend about 28 and a half million pounds a year on their arts budgets. And their benefits, using our algorithm, are worth £350 million a year, which means they've got an 11 to 1 return on investments. This is the first time you've actually had the algorithm to be able to generate those figures. And it's so important. Important because when I've spoken with government previously, they've said they've never had a number to put into cost benefit analyses. So when they're considering what they should invest in or equally, what should they cut, Arts engagement is the thing that sort of often feels like, well, we haven't really got a number for what it's returning, so let's cut that one, because then it looks like we're not losing out. And I think we have to challenge that mentality because actually these analyses are showing that every pound or dollar that you cut in arts investment actually has impact, not just for the health and well being of the population, but also for budgets and for other outcomes elsewhere in society.
- [19:55]
C
When you think about the different types of art pursuits and the different types of health challenges that people face, are there certain types of creative endeavors that pair better to certain maladies? So in reducing inflammation, if you've got arthritis, you know, is there a prescription is what I'm trying to get to, for specific types of challenges that people face.
- [20:22]
A
There are some outcomes where you sort of need certain ingredients in the arts activity to be able to achieve that outcome. So for example, for certain physical outcomes like movement, for example, there are a lot of studies about the benefits of things like dance activities as a way of supporting motor outcomes, particularly in people who might have conditions like Parkinson's disease or might be recovering from conditions like a stroke. And of course there the physical component of dance is particularly important, but as is the temporal rhythmic component of the music. So people can synchronise or entrain their movements to that and support in that movement process. Similarly, for lots of the cognitive outcomes that we see, like better preservation of cognition, better cognitive reserve, which is the name of the kind of resilience that our brains can build up against cognitive decline. It's particularly multimodal art forms. So things that would involve multiple regions of the brain, like making music, where you've got the auditory and you've got the tactile and you've got the memory components to it which have got the strongest associations with enhanced preservation of cognition and reduced risk of dementia. And even for people who do have Alzheimer's disease, music in particular is effective at helping memory recall because the specific region of the brain that's involved in long term musical memory is one of the last to be affected by Alzheimer's disease. So that's why music will continue to be remembered even when other art forms have been forgotten. So yes, there is definitely tailoring which I come back to across the book for different outcomes. But equally there are other kinds of outcomes where multiple different art forms can be of value.
- [22:00]
C
We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.
- [22:03]
A
Foreign.
- [22:08]
C
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- [26:42]
B
Not that we need yet more evidence to keep our kids off screens, and I think Aaron and I both, probably many times during the day and week, struggle to keep our kids off screens as much as we like. But I'm curious because in the case of our kids, they're not always watching things that are necessarily detrimental. There are probably arts related experiences that they're having, but is there a difference between experiencing the arts over a screen medium and participating or listening? And I'm sure there's some, probably, as you were saying, some biological physiological differences there, but maybe you could talk, just give us a little more ammo. I think to keep the kids off the screens is what we're looking for
- [27:18]
A
when we actually look at things like the outcomes for young people, like reduced risk of developing behavioural problems or getting involved in antisocial or criminal behaviours. It's specifically participatory arts that have been linked in to those outcomes, partly because one of the core skills that participatory arts train is is self control. Like there's that diligence that you're doing when you're participating, where you're having to learn a craft, you're having to be patient, make mistakes, learn from it. And that self control is one of the key mediators between why participatory arts actually change behavioral outcomes. And another key one is around self esteem. So participatory arts gives people a chance to build mastery and a sense of pride in what they're doing, which means that they can feel that they're being judged for what they're doing rather than for Example their looks or other characteristics. So those are some of the important mechanisms of participatory. When we directly look and compare screen based to non screen based engagement. There are actually a few studies that have done this. Now I actually led one of these where we looked at people getting involved in virtual choirs, where you'd sing from your bedroom but through your computer, versus being involved in live choirs. And we basically found that everything was a bit more muted when people were doing it online. Like their emotional responses were just a bit more muted. And particularly their feeling of whether they were socially present with the other people in the class, that was a lot weaker. And I think it's important to acknowledge that because essentially what we seem to see is a dilution effect of arts experiences when they're online or screen based. And that's why actually in the book I call them, rather rudely, the ultra processed food of the arts world. Screen based dance experiences. It's not to say that they're rubbish and they don't have benefits because there are still benefits from that. And I talk as well about benefits that can be gained from certain television watching, but I think we have to acknowledge that it doesn't have those same ingredients that you get from the non screen based. So wherever possible, it's much more valuable if people, especially young people, can make it real life engagements.
- [29:15]
C
Your research suggests that environment is a key component of whether or not arts therapies actually work. Intuitively, I know that living in a creative space, it affects me. And I knew it when I was a kid. Like if I am in what feels like a creative space, I feel differently, I feel better, I feel less depressed. Eli teaches at Stanford and the D School has put tons of research and time and energy into designing spaces that communicate sort of quietly that this is a place where creativity can happen. Can you talk to us about what your research shows about environment for healing, for being more creative, how that affects us, and how we might sort of optimize our living environments for maximum benefit.
- [30:06]
A
Environment is really important. One of the reasons that it has benefits for our mental health, for our stress reduction, for cognitive benefits, is because when we're in environments that have got that element of aesthetic beautiful design to them, it has an attention restoration effect. I'm sure we've all felt that feeling that you go into a really cluttered environment and you just feel a bit stressed out by it versus going into a really calm, beautifully aesthetically designed space and suddenly feeling like you're thinking a lot more clearly, like you're not being Distracted by things. Interestingly, there's a lot of focus in the UK at the moment about classroom environments for young people and about trying to be much more minimalist to try and focus on simplicity and beauty of design rather than clutter in those spaces. And there was already research about the relationship between environmental design and experience of autism symptoms amongst young people. I mean, other things that I think are really important here. One is actually, like, really trying to make spaces as creative as possible in order to, from a behavioral kind of nudge perspective, help us to engage in arts and creative practices. So I talk in the book about simple things people can do in their own home, like hanging pictures on walls in areas where they're likely to feel stressed. Like, if you're working from home, making sure you actually do have art around you, because that's one of the ways you can be helping to reduce stress response. If you're engaged in crafts or instruments, have them visible there, because that's much more likely behaviourally, to trigger you into actually engaging with them. And I also talk in the book about the value of taking particularly children as well as adults to artistic spaces where you're really immersed. I talk about the difference sometimes between engaging in the arts in kind of busy cafe spaces where you might have a lot of distraction around you and you can't really get into the zone, versus being able to go to spaces like places of worship or museums or arts venues like galleries, where it's designed to help you concentrate on the experience. Because if we can really get involved in that artistic experience and really get into the zone on it, we're much more likely to experience flow, which is that state where we have a synchronisation between the attentional and reward centers in our brain. And we get that feeling that an hour has passed and it only felt like five minutes. And when we experience that, we're much more likely to also experience feelings of inspiration and creativity. I actually noticed on the weekend, I took my kids to one of these immersive art galleries where the artwork is kind of projected all around you onto the floors, onto the walls. And I found it fascinating watching my kids because they were completely immersed in it. They were absolutely like, eyes open. But then my eldest started doing interpretative dance to the artwork. I have never seen her do interpretive dance in her entire life, but it was like the clearly, like, the design of that space and how immersive it was meant that it was not only capturing her attention, but really triggering that imagination and creativity. And in smaller ways, in our workplace in our homes, we can be designing those spaces to try and have those same effects.
- [33:06]
B
You just mentioned flow, and we had a author on recently, Bo Burnett, who I used to teach with, who wrote this book, how to Live a Meaningful Life. And flow, it turns out, is a big part of living a meaningful life, which is something I hadn't really considered before. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the neurological or psychological aspects about being in a flow state.
- [33:27]
A
Flow states are really valuable to us. They're typically achieved when we're doing something where there is enough of a challenge to kind of capture our attention, but not so much of a challenge that we feel that we're not equal to the task. So it's about finding that balance, the balance that means you're most likely to get that flow state. One of the reasons that flow is particularly important for us is that when we are engaged and having that experience of flow, we're really much more likely to have a deeper physiological response to what we're experiencing. So sometimes people talk about feeling tingly, like goosebumps, that kind of thing. These are known as peak experiences. And when they occur during a flow state, it's typically actually when we've just had a first boost of dopamine, so that happy hormone in response to what we're doing, and then we're just moving into that second boost. So it's often at the crossover point of those two dopamine boosts. Sometimes people just get this as a kind of physiological response, but sometimes it's also accompanied by psychological feelings of, like, rapture or awe or that sort of feeling of epiphany. They're known as aha moments within neuroscience literature. And not only something where, you know, you're more likely to have that flash of inspiration that might help your work or whatever, but there are also the moments when you might have that profound sense of meaning in your life, and you were talking about what makes a meaningful life. And actually, arts engagement is particularly good at helping people to experience a sense of meaning and also purpose in their lives, which are core psychological needs that it can be quite hard to fulfil in other areas of our lives. But the problem is, most of us don't really give enough attention when we're doing things. There was this great study looking at museums where they said, how long do people actually look at the artwork for? Basically, it was about 28 seconds, which is just enough to kind of form an initial aesthetic response. It's not actually enough to get into the flow to have a much deeper Cognitive and psychological response to what we're seeing. So I think we all need to basically give a bit more time to activities if we really want to get into that state.
- [35:25]
C
There are a lot of designers, you know, they're doing things creatively at work. We talked about how the circumstances may not be ideal. And a lot of designers experience both burnout to some degree, and it's partly the circumstance of the role, but it's also just the nature of companies these days, Kind of asking a lot of employees, what does your research say about arts engagement and recovery from burnout?
- [35:54]
A
So, burnout is most likely to happen when people feel like they have got high stress, low control. And actually, it's that same high stress, low control that's linked in with increased risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks. So it's a pretty important thing for people to take seriously. What's quite interesting is lots of people say that they have that high stress, low control through their job, but actually it's possible to have compensation effects through how people spend their leisure time. So this is another area where actually, studies have shown that arts engagement is very effective at helping people to build their sense of control, of mastery, at learning new artistic skills, of autonomy, being able to make creative decisions about the art that they're involved with. And actually, by boosting that sense of control in other areas of life, it can actually have psychological benefits that can spill over even into the domains of life where people are feeling more out of control. So I think that's one important thing is considering how people can use leisure to try and compensate for feelings of low control in their lives, and also how workplaces can try to support people's engagements in arts and creativity to support those same outcomes.
- [37:02]
B
You talk about some pretty compelling research in the book around arts engagement and increased longevity. And I wonder if there's a way to tease out whether it's the art itself. Is having a solo practice enough, or is there also a social kind of communal element to that where there's also a lot of research around how loneliness can impact health and longevity. Is it hard to tease those things out, or is there pretty clear evidence on either way?
- [37:28]
A
It is hard, but actually, it has been done. So, I mean, a lot of these longevity studies, the challenge is you're working with observational data. You're not randomizing people into arts or no arts and then following them up for their entire lives. So there is always the risk about, well, have I missed factors that could actually explain this relationship? But that's the same whether we're looking at arts and longevity or any other exposure, whether it's diet or sleep or physical activity, and longevity as well. What has been done within these studies, which now number well over a dozen, showing this relationship is that the scientists have not only looked at ensuring that the relationship is not down to things like wealth or demographics or whatever, but they've also looked at some of those other behaviours. So, for example, in one of the mortality studies, which I did, we looked at people's social behaviours and their engagement in other community groups or volunteering or clubs or societies that were non arts based. And we found that they did explain a bit of the association. So in other words, arts engagement was acting as a bit of a vehicle to people getting some of those social or physical benefits. But we found that actually the association again was independent. It was persisted independent of those factors. So I think we can safely say that they are a contributing factor to why we see that relationship, but they are not the whole factor.
- [38:42]
C
In the book, you've got a Daily Dose section at the end of the chapters. Thinking about people who are, you know, I'd say most everybody listening to the show thinks of themselves as creative to some degree, but there are a lot of people who just think I'm not creative. Which makes me sad to think that that's an identity that people take on when I think fundamentally every human being has the capacity for creativity, but is there sort of like a microdose of creative action that can happen daily that someone could get into that makes this a regular practice instead of a thing I did on the weekend two months ago and I'll do it again in another month.
- [39:24]
A
So I completely agree with you. Everyone is creative. And I talk about this scientifically, that arts engagement has been a human behavior. Well, singing's been with us for over 200,000 years. Other arts practices for at least 40, 50, 60,000. Some evidence saying even longer. We know that babies are responding to music even in the womb, even within a few hours of being born. They can tell when you've played a song incorrectly that they've heard before in the womb. So we all do have that inherent creative capacity. I say in the book that we are a planet of 8 billion artists. But there is this challenge around people's engagement rates. Currently, if you ask Americans, only 1 in 20 will say they did any arts activity yesterday. And for reference, 57% will say they ate vegetables and 40% will say they exercise. And I really don't believe the arts are any less enjoyable than those things
- [40:12]
B
they're probably not telling the truth either about those things, you know, if you ask.
- [40:16]
A
So that's why at the end of each chapter I do have these sections about. Well, like you've read the chapter, you've got the interesting science, but what can you actually do to apply it in your own lives? And a big focus for me is what are the simple things? Because everyone says they're busy, everyone says they don't have time. So it's about really clear takeaways that people can have. Things like, if you're going to a gallery, don't try and see the whole gallery. Literally focus on a small amount of the gallery where you can spend more than 28 seconds looking at each artwork so that you can maximise the physiological benefits that you get from it. If you're listening to music, I talk about exactly what tempo of music is going to be best at changing your motor response, depending on whether you're trying to do high intensity exercise or you're trying to do rehabilitation for a neurological disorder. I talk about which styles of art are going to be most effective for pain relief and how you can use the different art forms most effectively to activate analgesic pathways in the brain. So it's sort of very, very specific science led recommendations. But I also, in the final chapter have this section where I talk about behavioral science more and I give this checklist of questions about why you might not be engaging in the arts and then propose what the behavioural change interventions for you could be. Because for some people it might be believing that they're not artistic, they're not creative, in which case it's much more about reframing that way of thinking and starting to try activities, not focusing or worrying about not having the skills, but thinking about activities that you can enjoy and participate in right from the beginning. So it might not be picking up the oboe, but it might be instead doing some crafts or something where you can immediately see that you actually can do it. But then there are other people where actually it might be much more practical around, like a lack of funding, for example, in which case I talk through lots of free and simple ways of being able to get engaged. Or for people who are too busy thinking about swaps, like stop scrolling the news on the way to work and read a book in that time instead. If you're meeting up with friends, don't go for dinner or drinks, go to a gig or go to an exhibition so that you're weaving creative opportunities into your lives. And I encourage people to think about it. A bit like they think about their food. So we all know about like have your five a day of fruit and veg or whatever that equivalent is. We'll figure out what's my equivalent for arts. Is it about having 15 minutes every day that I will do something creative and trying to think about variety of ingredients like we do with our diet. Like trying not just to focus on one arts activity, like always reading or listening to music, but trying to mix it up. Because different arts activities bring different kinds of health benefits.
- [42:49]
C
This makes me think of a lot of the habit shaping philosophies of like James Clear, BJ Fogg Reducing friction. I like what you said about keeping your instruments out. I always have my instruments out because when I see them they make me happy and they make me want to play more. And I do this with my kids. I call it setting traps. So they have instruments hung on their walls. There's a chess set on the coffee table that they might sit down and play. There are records available. We play a record every morning at breakfast. These are all sort of traps that they could fall into because if I try to tell them, hey, you should do this, they're gonna resist. But if I set the trap and then they choose, they might go for it. I'm curious what you do with your kids to try to get their daily dose of the arts.
- [43:42]
A
Similar things actually to you. So things like I put on the radio with music at breakfast every day. I've hung instruments on the walls. We have dedicated story time each day. We really regularly go to exhibitions or even to go and see buskers in the town where we live. Which is a really simple free thing to be able to do, but really good exposure. I've set us some rules so things like we never buy any greetings or birthday cards anymore. We always have to make them. And it's just, it's a very, very simple thing. But it means that then you know, you've got that prompt like it's someone's birthday. Okay, I've got to make them a card. So that's been a really lovely one to do with them. And also lots of things like junk modeling and picking up nature objects and using that as the inspiration. So something that doesn't cost anything but just gives you that initial impetus to respond to the environment they're seeing around them.
- [44:28]
B
I love the birthday card trick. I mean birthday cards have gotten so expensive these days. You can actually save a lot of money by having your kids do them for. You do love that. So you talk about the Seatbelt moment, we talked about that earlier and seatbelts are this preventative measure. So what are some reasons we should view these participatory arts as a preventative measure versus a cure?
- [44:50]
A
Really? We can see it as a spectrum. So at one hand there's the arts engagement that we would just do, not even thinking about our health, but just for the everyday enjoyment of it in our homes, in schools, in libraries or whatever. But that's the one that often has these inherent well being or preventative health benefits. Then you can kind of move along that spectrum to kind of more public health pathways. So, you know, in the UK and the us, we both have schemes where doctors can refer people to the arts. They can recognise people who might be coming with depressive symptoms or loneliness or issues like pain and be able to say, well, have you thought about joining these classes? Because these are evidence based classes that can support that. And often those classes are still community based arts classes, but it's about that public health referral pathway into them for people who might not have realised those health benefits. And then moving further along that spectrum, you've got those much more clinically orientated programmes, whether that's creative arts therapies that are led by trained accredited arts therapists with specific clinical outcomes in mind, or programmes like dance for Parkinson's classes, for example, that are then using the arts again, trying to target a particular health outcome. And I think it's really important to recognize that whole spectrum because it's what we see for exercise too, right? We can do exercise for the fun of it. We might enjoy going walking or swimming, or we can be referred by our doctor to really focus on our health. Or we can have bespoke rehabilitation physio programs in clinical settings for particular clinical outcomes. And we need to value and have space for all of those.
- [46:19]
C
What are you reading, watching, listening to that has you looking at the world with fresh eyes.
- [46:26]
A
I'm a member of a local book club, which I love because it just really exposes me to completely new things. Something that has caught me completely off guard is this month we decided to try fantasy novels for the first time and I have been absolutely hooked, which I never would have expected because I've not read anything like this before. But that's been a really lovely escapism and quite a welcome change from a series of very heavy books that we've been doing before Christmas, which fantasy novels we've just read, Fourth Wing, which I have very much enjoyed. I realise I'm very much behind the curve. These have been out for a while and have already got enormous popularity. And in terms of listening, well, I'm a Taylor Swift fan, so obviously been enjoying the latest album of that, particularly because my eldest daughter is trying to learn the guitar and is convinced that she's going to be the future Taylor Swift. And I haven't got the heart to tell her the sad reality. It's probably not gonna happen.
- [47:13]
B
It might. You never know. The next big artist can arise anywhere. That's awesome. I've been enjoying fantasy books myself. Too late. I mean, it's something I've maybe enjoyed longer term, but I said sometimes revisiting old classics is fun. I went back and rereading the Lord of the Rings, and as you come back as an older reader to something that I read in my childhood, you pick up on things that you may have missed as a kid, too, which is fun.
- [47:33]
A
I think that's a really lovely feature of the arts. And actually we know that neurologically, when you return to an art form you've done before, you actually cognitively process it differently. But even if you know what's coming, even if you know all the twists and turns coming in the plots, you actually still experience all of the same dopamine releases and excitements at all of those different journeys, because your brain still knows that these are twists and turns that should be catching you out and might have caught you out in the past.
- [47:58]
B
Well, Daisy, it's been great having you on the show. Your book is up for a really cool award. Tell us a little bit about that and also where folks can find the book.
- [48:05]
A
Yeah, I'm delighted to say it's been long listed for the International Women's Prize for Nonfiction, which is really exciting. And you can get it from anywhere, from shops or online. It's called Art the Science of how the Arts Save Lives.
- [48:19]
C
Fantastic. Daisy Fancart, thank you for being on Design Better.
- [48:22]
A
Thank you.
- [48:27]
C
This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to finer shows. Or simply drop a link to the show in your team's Slack channel designbetterpodcast.com It'll really help others discover the show. Until next time,