Celebrating Creative Health in Dorset
Our Creative Health Associate, Gemma Alldred, reflects on her 3 years of work championing and shaping Creative Health in Dorset, from early conversations to a county-wide strategy for the future.
It’s almost three years since I was asked by the Arts Development Company to take a closer look at Creative Health in Dorset.
As the Creative Health strategy nears its publication and we end this phase of work, it feels a good time to look back right now. I’m remembering the milestones and achievements that have happened along the way… including hosting a very early Zoom call that explained this ‘new’ term Creative Health
Health + Culture Event, 2024
In 2023, I spent a year asking lots of people in different places, ‘What do we need for Creative Health to Thrive in Dorset?’, one of the arising themes was a space to connect, and in quick response the Creative Health & Wellbeing Dorset Forum was set up – we’re now almost 200 members strong and meet online monthly sharing ideas, and making a difference by working together.
2024 brought an end to our consultation phase with Health + Culture, a key event that showcased HOW Creative Health is working in other places, and helped us inspire our own thinking. The Creative Health Action Group was established, bringing together people delivering in Creative Health across the county so we could start working collaboratively around the shared priorities we’d discovered across the year.
2024 was also the start of our collaboration with NHS Dorset, and together with Public Health, we set about the work needed to co-produce Dorset’s first Creative Health strategy.
In 2025 we worked with National Centre for Creative Health to produce the video ‘What is Creative Health?’, an important tool in helping us spread the message, we met for a second time with a wide range of stakeholders across the integrated care system to ‘dream’ a future for Creative Health leading to our strategy being written.
As an ADC associate artist, specialising in Creative Health, I was excited to be able to fulfil a role I am deeply passionate about. It’s been a privilege to meet so many people, hear and share your concerns, make space for and hold your ambitions. I’ve also felt honoured to be trusted to advocate and represent your work as Creative Health practitioners, and support organisations across a huge range of events, from presenting at regional conference days and the Integrated Care Board, to talking to social prescribers, and visiting Access Wellbeing centres.
And so as the strategy will begin to roll out, the dedicated Creative Health lead role comes to a pause, I remain the Arts Development Company Creative Health associate, and continue my professional Creative Health practice in my work as a freelancer, and as co-director of CoCreate Dorset.
I have joked that over my time in this role, I’ve often felt like the Avon Lady of Creative Health… “ding, dong – Creative Health calling!” and I hope that I’ve contributed in some way to spreading the message that being creative is good for you, and the work of Creative Health Practitioners is credible, nuanced, skilled and valuable.
We all play our part in the movement, keep spreading the message, uphold the strategy in the work you do, apply the quality principles and keep being brilliant in all your creativity – value yourself and the work you do. It matters.
Stay Creative, Stay Well.
Gemma