Research Collaboration and Evaluation through Healing Arts Scotland (CHASER)

Healing Arts Scotland 2024 (HAS) is an exciting, country-wide weeklong event celebrating and advocating for improved physical, mental and social health through the arts. Part of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab’s global ‘Healing Arts’ campaign, the one-week activation event is being produced together with a national coalition of organizations across culture, science, health, education and government as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, 19-23 August 2024.

CHASER (Research Collaboration and Evaluation through Healing Arts Scotland) will facilitate the creation of new research partnerships through the activation event to set a foundation for future innovation, research, and policymaking in Scotland. The project will involve creating and leading an evaluation of HAS events and activities, drawing upon creative and collaborative methods.

The CHASER project aims to explore potential avenues for future research and collaboration in arts and health in Scotland, as well as evaluate HAS events and activities. This includes exploring the possibility for HAS to catalyze and strengthen the arts and health community in Scotland, raise awareness to public health priorities such as loneliness & social isolation, mental health and wellbeing (specifically youth mental health), and noncommunicable diseases (specifically dementia), and bring to the fore the role of the arts in addressing these priorities. The project takes a mixed-methods approach utilizing surveys, focus groups, arts-based methods (including photography and video), interviews, and informal discussions, seeking to evaluate HAS from multiple perspectives and build a foundation for future research collaboration and policymaking.

The project will run from May until December 2024.

Insights and Deliverables

The main output of CHASER will be an evaluation report that will explore the impact of HAS and the experiences of those involved in view of considerations for future arts and health research, policy, and practice in Scotland. The report will include a short evaluation video to provide an interactive way to engage with feedback from the event. We will also map what arts and health organizations have been involved in HAS, and explore what social networks in arts and health exist in Scotland and why, seeking to further understand the structure of the field in Scotland and to identify areas for future development.

Project Team

Led by Dr Katey Warran (PATHS Research Group, University of Edinburgh) and Dr Nisha Sajnani (JAHL, NYU Steinhardt), the research team consists of members from the University of Edinburgh, Jameel Arts & Health Lab, Scottish Ballet, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University, and Oxford University.

Funding and support

Support for this project was provided by the Jameel Arts & Health Lab.

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