I Spent 3 Months Prioritising My Creative Health—Here's Why It's Essential For Healthy Ageing

As my job title might imply, I’m a pretty health-conscious person. I exercise most days, try to eat a nourishing and balanced diet, and by and large, I get my eight hours of sleep.

It’s nothing special (I’m far from the world of biohacking and extreme optimisation), but like many of us, I try to find ways to live healthily and happily where I can.

So when, back in March, I found myself feeling a little sluggish, foggy and unfulfilled, I was surprised. My alcohol intake wasn’t excessive; I was sleeping well and running regularly, so why did I feel like I was going through the motions, rather than really living?

One answer, as I’ve come to discover, was my neglected creative health, which research increasingly demonstrates is key to mental and emotional wellbeing, reduced inflammation and slower cellular ageing.

For the past three months, I’ve been treating creative activities as importantly as exercise, building them into my daily routine to see what they could do for my wellbeing. The results? Nothing short of transformative.

For my thoughts (and the expert take on the benefits of investing in your creative health), read on. There’s also more on this topic, and other unconventional routes to greater wellbeing, in our guides to frictionmaxxing, doodling and little treat culture.

What I Learnt From 3 Months Prioritising My Creative Health

What is creative health?

Whilst it would be easy to reduce creative health to colouring in for an hour or crocheting a hat, creative health scientist Katina Bajaj says the concept runs deeper than the individual acts themselves. Bajaj, who studies how creativity has disappeared from adult life, explains that “creative health is a pillar of well-being responsible for our vitality, curiosity and capacity for meaning-making.”

Unfortunately, she says, it’s “often left out of conversations about health and flourishing,” despite a body of research connecting creative expression to improvements in cognitive, emotional, physical and social well-being.

What are the longevity benefits of investing in your creative health?

Very often, creativity is considered a luxury in our day-to-day lives, but as Professor Daisy Fancourt, author of Art Cure: The Science of How The Arts Transform Our Health, explains, it shouldn’t be. “Arts engagement is a health-promoting behaviour similar to eating a healthy diet, getting physical activity and good sleep,” she says.

She has research to back her up. A landmark study led by Professor Fancourt at University College London found that people who did an arts activity at least once a week aged 4% more slowly than those who rarely engaged with the arts. Importantly, the effect remained even after accounting for factors like smoking, BMI and income and was similar to the impact of exercising at least once a week.

So, how does it work? Well, according to Professor Fancourt’s research, creative activities may prompt positive changes in brain proteins involved in reducing inflammation and keeping the brain healthy.

The researchers also found that those who were more engaged in the arts had a lower future risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, depression and dementia, building on previous research which has connected the arts with reduced risk of depression in teenagers.

What are the signs your creative health is suffering?

You might be wondering what shape your own creative health is in right now, and you’d be right to. And that’s because, whilst many of us may be experiencing symptoms of low creative health, we may not connect the dots ourselves.

“People might be experiencing physical or mental health challenges, but might not be conscious that engaging in the arts is a behaviour that could help them with their symptoms,” explains Professor Fancourt.

As for what these symptoms could look like, it could be a sense of unfulfillment in your day-to-day life. Or, as Bajaj explains, it could be a sense of going through the motions without fully living. “Creativity is what gives us vitality,” she explains. “When someone is lacking in creative health, they may feel robotic or like they’re on a hamster wheel.”

3 tips to start building your creative health:

So, what do we actually do to improve our creative health? Well, as Bajaj pointed out in her recent TED Talk, boosting your creativity doesn’t need to be tightly measured or prescribed. In fact, often this is the antithesis of what we’re searching for.

“Being creative isn’t something you have to wait to do later, once school or work is done,” she explains. Instead, it’s about “integrating it into the way we think, express ourselves, decompress and connect with community.”

The great news is that this means boosting our creative health doesn’t require us to have lots more stuff or to dedicate hours of time. It could be as simple as spending a few minutes doodling, daydreaming or singing. That said, the fact that it can be so easily woven into our day is also what makes it easy to fall off the radar.

Fortunately, Professor Fancourt has some habit-building tips.

1. Build a creative 5-a-day

“Try to work out what would be the equivalent of your 5-a-day in fruits and vegetables in creative activities,” she suggests. “Maybe that’s fifteen to 20 minutes of art, or timetabling an hour a week to take a creative class.”

2. Think about creative diversity

“Just like our diet, it’s important not just to have one creative ingredient, but to have a variety in our lives,” explains Professor Fancourt. “This is as important as frequency.”

3. Remember that you don’t have to be ‘good’

“Just like you don’t have to be a chef to cook good food, you don’t actually have to be good at the creative activity to experience the health benefits,” reassures Professor Fancourt. “A lot of the benefits actually come from participating, so it’s a good opportunity to try a new hobby.”

I’ve spent the last three months prioritising my creative health—and have become happier and more imaginative

I want to point out that the majority of things I’ve done during my three-month creative health experiment have been pretty unextraordinary. They’ve involved doodling sessions (something I’d picked up last year but let slide over the winter), getting inventive in the kitchen, building dedicated time into my day to daydream and pulling out my old drawing pads and pencils which had long been stuffed in the back of the cupboard.

But for the sake of time and your attention span, I’m going to focus on two core memories from the last three months that made the biggest impact on my creative health.

Studio sessions

At the end of March, in the depth of my creative rut, I attended a clay charm-making workshop with a grassroots community called Studio Sessions. Run by two women, Tyla and Iman, the idea is to build community and connection between strangers over the theme of arts and crafts.

Three things stood out to me about the evening. First, how nice it was to be utterly absorbed in something you’re objectively bad at. Patience isn’t my strong suit (I’m an Aries for those wondering), so the finicky nature of moulding tiny clay charms was always going to be a challenge. Once I got to work, however, the world seemed to fall away, and I was completely focused on creating my plasticine fried egg.

Second, having others around you whilst you’re being creative has an extra je nes se quois to it. There’s something about social connection and the arts which just seems to go together, providing an added boost to the positive feelings I got when I was being creative at home alone.

And third, how accomplished I felt at the end of the night. At 10 pm, when I’d usually be at home scrolling and starting to yawn, I felt energised and ready to keep chatting late into the evening. My brain was awash with ideas for projects, and problems I’d been mulling over seemed to have clearer solutions.

Nimi Collective

Towards the end of the three months, when my creative health was already in better shape thanks to the consistency of my home practices, I attended an art gallery walk around London with a community called Nimi Collective.

I’ve always loved art and like to draw at home, but I’ve never considered myself an art person (i.e. someone who frequents the Tate at the weekend and can reel off the famous painters from across history).

But as I discovered through speaking to Anh, a former investment banker who founded Nimi, that’s how a lot of people come to the community. “A lot of people who find Nimi are what I would call shadow creatives,” she tells me. “They were creative as children but now work stressful office jobs and somewhere along the way the outlet to be creative just disappeared. Nimi is where they come back to that part of themselves.”

Like my experience at Studio Sessions, the opportunity to be creative within a social environment was one of the defining elements of my day with the group at Nimi. Hearing the different perspectives on art broadened my horizons, challenged me to think differently and undoubtedly left me feeling more present, energised and brimming with ideas.

The verdict on creative health

I can’t speak for how all these new creative activities (which also included a spoken word evening and all-female comedy night) are affecting me on a cellular level - all that’s going on below the surface - but what I can say is that carving out time for my imagination and curiosity to run wild has made me feel happier and healthier than almost any more conventional wellness habit.

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