Professor Daisy Fancourt on Art Cure and the Future of Arts and Health

INTRODUCTION

Professor Daisy Fancourt has long been a defining voice in the global arts-and-health field, and her new book Art Cure brings decades of research to a broad public audience. In this conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Fancourt about why she positions the arts as a “fifth pillar” of health, and how the fast-growing scientific evidence—from immune function and gene expression to loneliness, ageing, and everyday wellbeing—shows that creativity is far more than a leisure activity and symbol of luxury: it is a powerful health behaviour.

Art Cure is written for anyone interested in understanding how and why the arts improve health, including artists, community practitioners, health professionals, educators, policymakers, and also people who don’t yet see themselves as “artistic.” As Professor Fancourt emphasises that we are all innately creative. The book provides accessible science, practical guidance, “daily dose” recommendations, and inspiring stories that help readers recognise how to weave more creativity into day-to-day life.

If you’re looking for evidence to support arts programming, seeking ways to optimise the benefits of creative engagement, or curious about how the arts influence the body at a biological level, Art Cure offers a clear, research-based foundation. And for those who feel the arts “aren’t for them,” this book extends an invitation, showing how the smallest artistic acts can support healthier, more connected living.

The Arts Health Network ACT/NSW are delighted to share this interview and extend our thanks to Professor Fancourt for her generous insights.

Art Cure is now available for pre-order and will be released on 8 January 2026, with print, audio, Kindle editions, and a growing list of events (in-person and online) available via the Social Biobehavioural Research Group website.

INTERVIEW

Reframing Arts and Health

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: In Art Cure, you position the arts alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature as a “fifth pillar” of health. Could you talk us through how you arrived at this analogy and how you hope this reframing will shift public perception of arts engagement?

Daisy Fancourt: For all these other health behaviours, they are things that people know in their day-to-day lives are beneficial to them, and as a result, people often plan them into their day-to-day behaviours. Governments also provide specific guidance to help people meet particular targets to enhance their health (like eating your 5-a-day for fruit and veg), but the arts have always been conspicuously absent from any of these discussions. And I think this is a problem. It’s a problem because it means that people often don’t see the arts as a beneficial activity to invest time in regularly, but instead, they see it as a luxury that they should only really do when they have the time, and that when things get busy or stressful or when they’re not feeling their best, that they should drop the arts and focus in on the other health behaviours. And we now know that arts engagements is as good for certain health outcomes as these other health behaviours. In fact, lots of the studies I talk about in the book directly compare arts engagement with these other health behaviours and show comparable results. So, I think it’s really important for the public to be aware of that scientific evidence so they can make more informed decisions about how they prioritise the arts in their lives. But also important for governments to be thinking in this way when they’re thinking about public health guidance.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Is this (arts as the “fifth pillar” of health) an analogy that you’ve heard others talk about before, or is this something that you through your work, have come to crystallise?

Daisy Fancourt: The concept of the arts being a health behaviour has been discussed increasingly over the last decade, but seeing it as this pillar of health is an analogy that I’m really emphasising in this book, as is one of the other analogies that I talk about: the idea of a seatbelt moment. The seatbelt moment is the idea that there are these “pivot” points when suddenly the evidence and public perception becomes great enough that there’s a big sea change in people’s awareness and their behaviours. And we see that from seat belts campaigns in the 1990s and other examples I talk about. This analogy is really important because I think that we are getting to that point when we could have a real transformation in how people think about and value the arts in their lives.

Evidence and Insight

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Your book highlights a wide range of evidence, from neural and immune responses to social-loneliness outcomes, demonstrating the impact of arts on health. Which area of evidence surprised you the most, or felt the most compelling, and why?

Daisy Fancourt: Personally, I’ve always been drawn to the biological evidence because it’s my own research background, but also because I think it provides one of the most objective types of outcomes we can look at, and it also gives biological plausibility to some of the broader health outcomes that the arts are related to. One of the things that’s been really exciting in the in the last few years has been looking at biological “signatures” of arts engagement in much larger panels of biological data. So, looking at how arts engagement relates to proteins and metabolites in the body, gene expression, and biological indices that tell us whether we’ve got accelerated aging for example. I actually only cover a fraction of this literature in the book, because it’s been accelerating so quickly that we already have even more studies from when I finished writing this book a few months ago. In fact, my team and our global collaborators have just launched a major new program of work taking arts biological research forwards through a Wellcome Discovery Award, which is a multimillion pound seven-year grant that we’ve just received. And I think this, for me, is the most exciting thing, because it really is at the cutting edge methodologically, of what’s possible to look at, not just for arts, but for all other health behaviours as well.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: That is fantastic and hugely exciting. And congratulations on being able awarded the support to further this research as well. In light of the new research, do you want to write another book about it?

Daisy Fancourt: I think I’ll leave it with this book for now! I’m hoping that this book gives people plenty of evidence to think about, and hopefully it will also make people want to stay engaged with what new evidence is coming out in this space too.

From Research to Practice

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Much of your research emphasises large-scale epidemiological findings. How do you suggest arts practitioners, health professionals, or cultural organisations translate this evidence into everyday programming and practice?

Daisy Fancourt: Well, epidemiological data tells us about everyday arts behaviours, and I think this is really crucial, because a lot of work on Arts and Health and lots of experimental work has been about bespoke interventions – particular programs that are targeted at a particular health outcome. But epidemiological data tells us about what our day-to-day behaviours do to our health, whether it’s listening to music or going to plays or the theatre or being involved in community arts workshops, for example. I’m hoping that this will provide understanding and evidence that can inform the practice of community artists, so they can understand what impact their work is having and even consider how they can modify the types of activities that they’re doing to try and optimise those benefits for people. But I’m also hoping it’ll support with activities like making the case for community arts funding. I know that writing these kinds of business cases is an increasing challenge for artists with budget cuts and arts venue closures and funding and austerity that impacts on the arts. I’m hoping that this book will be supportive so that they have these quantifiable facts about how valuable their work is.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Regarding supporting practice-based working, are there toolkits or templates within the book that people to draw upon?

Daisy Fancourt: Yes. At the end of each chapter, I give what I call a “daily dose”, which is a series of recommendations, drawing on the scientific evidence for how you can engage most effectively in the arts to optimise the health benefits. So, it’s things like: What’s the optimum length of a dance for a Parkinson’s class? What’s the best music to listen to if you’re waiting to have surgery? How could you get the greatest dopamine releases from engaging in the arts to improve your happiness? So, it’s using the science to help people know how they can change their behaviours. But I do also offer a 10-point plan at the end of the book about how you can generally enhance your own day-to-day engagement in the arts.

Access, Equity, and Public Health

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Equity appears to be a recurring theme in your work: arts engagement isn’t evenly distributed, yet it’s linked to long-term health outcomes. In the context of Art Cure, how do you see the arts-and-health field responding to issues of access, diversity, and structural barriers?

Daisy Fancourt: I think part of this is about being able to support everybody to engage in the arts, particularly trying to identify people who wouldn’t otherwise engage and provide opportunities for them to engage, or pathways through which they can access existing community arts provisions. But I also think it’s about considering what are the barriers, such as structural barriers, that might need to be addressed here. For example, where might we need more targeted new cultural offerings of arts activities to meet particular the cultural interests of individual participants? And I think this is the responsibility of everybody, from individuals and artists and communities through to governments, policymakers – thinking about how they can do things like improving arts funding or increasing provision of community assets, like libraries, arts venues, for example, even in deprived areas, to make sure that there are equal opportunities for people to be able to engage. And thinking about the role of the arts within school curricula.

My role at the moment is trying to find any opportunity I can to share news about the book to make sure that it’s known about, both by artists and people in the arts world, but also by people who are not engaged. Once people understand the evidence, it might convince them to either change their own behaviours or to change the way that they’re supporting the arts in their personal or professional lives through, for example, unlocking funding for arts within the community.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Is there a particular group or a demographic that you would, feel most rewarded to have reached?

Daisy Fancourt: People who feel like they wouldn’t otherwise have engaged, and people who feel like the arts aren’t for them, or that they’re not artistic. I think those are some of the really exciting audiences to reach. The first story that I share in the book is a man called Russell who suffered major health challenges and didn’t believe the arts would ever be of value to him, because he just didn’t see himself as artistic. And I follow his story across the book, and it’s just one of many examples – many people will know similar stories themselves – where individuals actually discover they are artistic once they start engaging. We are innately artistic. Everyone is a producer of the arts. As I say in the book, we’re a planet of 8 billion artists. So, I think helping people to recognise that art is something they can engage in, even if it’s not something that they’ve had past experience in, is a key goal.

How can we Engage with Art Cure?

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: After discussing many aspects of Art Cure, I’m curious about where the notion to write a book from.

Daisy Fancourt: The book is something that I’ve done on the side because we’re publishing more and more papers and more and more policy reports, but I’m increasingly aware that that’s not a type of output that many people read, and even though the evidence base is accumulating so fast now, there can still be this general lack of awareness of how beneficial the arts are to our health. That’s really why I’ve written this as a public facing book. It’s to try and make sure that there are really accessible outputs that includes stories, practical advice and guidance that speak to the public in public language so that they can join the conversations that are already happening increasingly amongst researchers and amongst policy makers.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Do you include many visuals in the book?

Daisy Fancourt: Yes, there are visuals as well! The book includes pictures of art by artists, scientific diagrams and graphs, and images of the brain.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Wonderful, and to extend to that, from the perspective of an artist, have you organised collaborations with artists in terms of sharing the book or disseminating the book in in artistic contexts? Is that something that you are interested in?

Daisy Fancourt: Not yet, but if people feel moved to create artistically that is very welcome. I actually got sent a rap song by a member of the public the other day, inspired when they saw the book, which was really touching to receive, to know that already the concept of the book has been sparking new artistic creativity. So I’d be delighted if artists do have responses to it, and if they do, then please do tag my research group on social media.

We’re SBBResearch https://www.linkedin.com/company/social-biobehavioural-research-group/, and we’ll make sure that we reshare people’s work.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Are you going to be traveling with book once it has been released on the 8^th of January 2026? And with our Australian audiences in mind, will you be traveling abroad?

Daisy Fancourt: I have a busy schedule in 2026 of travel in the UK and abroad as well as lots of media and online events. There is a website page that brings together all the information about the book and associated events (which are being added weekly): https://sbbresearch.org/projects/artcure/. The book comes out on the 8^th of January 2026, as does the Kindle edition and audiobook as well.

Elyssa Sykes-Smith: Thank you for your time and insights Daisy, I have pre-ordered my book and am eager to incorporate this research into my practice!

Image: Art Cure book cover (UK)

Written and posted by Elyssa Sykes-Smith.

Daisy Fancourt is Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London where she heads the Social Biobehavioural Research Group, and Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health. She has published 300 scientific papers, won over two dozen academic prizes and is listed as one of the most highly cited scientists in the world. Daisy is also a multi-award-winning science communicator and has been named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and BBC New Generation Thinker.
Elyssa Sykes-Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and researcher, and Media Officer at AHNNA.

Professor Daisy Fancourt on Art Cure and the Future of Arts and Health