Guy Noble

Museums, health and well-being

Contents: Foreword Museums, health and well-being The role of arts in health The link between museums and health and well-being Museums and health in practice Measuring health and well-being Moving forward and final conclusions Index.

Investigating the therapeutic potential of a heritage-object focused intervention: a qualitative study

This study explores the therapeutic potential of heritage-object handling in nurse-patient encounters with women facing cancer. Ten women participated in an object-focused conversation with a nurse specialist. Sessions were audio-tape recorded and transcribed. Kleinian theory framed the analysis to reveal the individual ways women ‘used’ the object in the session. Professionally observed heritage-object handling provides an aid to discussion with patients and has potential as an assessment platform for therapeutic work or as an intervention approach in its own right. Further longitudinal controlled trials are needed to evaluate such benefits, particularly given the depth of the talk revealed in this study.

Heritage, health and well-being: assessing the impact of a heritage focused intervention on health and well-being

Do museums and other heritage organisations have something to offer the healthcare sector? Do they have a role in improving health and well-being? Increasingly both heritage and healthcare organisations think they do. A broader definition of health including well-being and an emphasis on preventative medicine and multi-agency approaches to care within the UK’s National Health Service has facilitated the work of museums and galleries in this area. However, there are still few specific heritage programmes in healthcare organisations and very little evaluation of these. Here we present key findings from a qualitative evaluation of a heritage focused intervention carried out in a range of healthcare settings. The aim of the research project was to assess the impact on well-being of taking museum objects into hospitals and healthcare contexts.

Using museum objects to improve wellbeing in mental health service users and neurological rehabilitation clients

Introduction: The study investigated the impact of museum object handling sessions on hospital clients receiving occupational therapy in neurological rehabilitation and in an older adult acute inpatient mental health service. Methods: The research used a qualitative approach based on objectivist and constructionist methods, from which themes typical of the object handling sessions were derived. Results: Themes emerging from detailed analysis of discourse involving clients (n = 82) and healthcare staff (n = 8) comprised: distraction and decreasing negative emotion; increasing vitality and participation; tactile stimulation; conversational and social skills; increasing a sense of identity; novel perspectives and thoughts; learning new things; enjoyment and positive emotion. Critical success factors included good session facilitation for mitigating insecurity, ward staff support and the use of authentic heritage objects. Conclusion: Museums and their collections can be a valuable addition to cultural and arts occupations, in particular for long-stay hospital clients.

Generic well-being outcomes: towards a conceptual framework for well-being outcomes in museums

Abstract The concept of well-being is now widely used in policy, including in the museum sector. This article addresses the need for museums to understand and be able to measure their contribution to this increasingly important instrumental value, if they are to engage with the policy. However, due to the indefinite and inconsistent definition of the concept, it is difficult to know what to measure. There are also difficulties capturing this amorphous outcome to allow for generalisability and to assign causality – the key needs of policy-oriented research and evaluation. The article outlines these issues and looks at psychology, economics, healthcare and culture for insight. It also suggests a tentative Well-being Outcomes Framework that could be used consistently in the sector, to measure evidence and advocate for museums’ contribution to well-being.