Health and Wellbeing
ACAVA delivers creative programmes with transformational benefits to people's health and wellbeing
Socially engaged programmes in non-clinical settings
We have unique expertise in delivering socially engaged arts programmes in community and non-clinical health and wellbeing settings. Expansive programmes are delivered from our creative hubs in North Kensington, Essex and Stoke-on-Trent.
Activities delivered from our two-site campus in North Kensington exemplify decades-long successful collaborations with the NHS including Clinical Commissioning Groups and the new Integrated Care Systems, local stakeholders, artists and communities.
Since 2017, we have been the lead cultural organisation delivering programmes that help enable people to memorialise and recover from the Grenfell Tower fire.
Our Young Artists, Young Photographers, Maxilla Men’s Shed, Cultivate Create, Flourish and the Grenfell Memorial Community Mosaic programmes create experiences with transformational impacts on health and wellbeing, inspire people to participate in the arts and signpost career pathways to the creative industries for local young people.
In recognition of the significance of this work, ACAVA was shortlisted for the Award for Civic Arts Organisations (2022) by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and King’s College London.
“An inclusive approach, giving local people agency and ownership of the programmes”
Thirty years of collaboration with the NHS
ACAVA has pioneered the role of art and creativity in non-clinical health and wellbeing settings for over 30 years. We have considerable expertise in facilitating individual and collective co-creation, community consultation, strategic stakeholder management and identifying appropriate creative practitioners for the contexts we work in. This knowledge is unique in our sector today.
Artspace (1995 – 2017)
This remarkable 22-year collaboration demonstrates the enduring therapeutic value of art and creativity in non-clinical settings.
West London Clinical Commissioning Group (2012 – ongoing)
Since 2012, we have co-created two permanent art collections: at the St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing and the Violet Melchett Clinic.
NHS North Kensington Recovery Programme (2017 – ongoing)
ACAVA is the lead arts organisation designing and delivering complex Grenfell Tower fire recovery programmes bringing local people together through creativity to positively impact their health and wellbeing including countering social isolation.
NHS trust in our programming has enabled further collaboration with community and statutory services supporting recovery, including the Grenfell Memorial Community Mosaic, with Al Manaar Muslin Cultural Heritage Centre.
3ST
We currently advocate for the arts in the health sector as part of a coalition of third sector organisations working to improve health and care commissioning.
"ACAVA were able to persuade the NHS on the most appropriate way to do their monitoring."
