Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt review – is culture the best medicine? | | Books on health, mind and body

ADaisy Fancourt’s daughter Daphne was born prematurely, locked in an incubator, fighting for her life against several diseases. Unable to touch her son or enter the room, Fancourt would stare at the door, dressed head-to-toe in PPE, blaring music over the instruments and alarms. The music calmed her down, and was probably the most important thing to Daphne. Education shows that singing to babies in the intensive care unit lowers their heart rate, helps them breathe better, and encourages them to eat.

It was a time when Fancourt’s professional life and personal life collided. A professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, he researches how social interaction affects our health. In Art Cure, his first book for a popular audience, he aims to make a scientific case that the arts – from music to theater to photography – are more than mere embellishments in life. In fact, they are intimately connected to our mental and physical health at every level – from the functioning of our cells and molecules to our cognition, memory and emotions. In an era of shrinking funding for technology and healthcare systems, his message is especially important. But how can you put together the proof of the whole thing, unspeakable – and, perhaps, convincing. unscientific – like art?

Fancourt’s solution is to divide art and practice into their components. He argues that any art can be divided into “functional ingredients”; we could even – if we had the creative power – be converted into binary code. Calling sick babies is a combination of sound, nerve stimulation, social connection and stress relief. These ingredients trigger natural processes that lead to health, he explains, and we can test, refine and prescribe them as we would any other drug. With this approach in mind, they examine the evidence base for health care, from health to brain health, chronic pain and the times we live in.

Fancourt he avoids any notion of a miracle cure: he rejects claims that listening to classical music kills cancer cells. But they show that creative interventions, given alongside regular treatment, can have significant effects: reducing stress and pain, improving coordination and coordination in Parkinson’s disease; helping patients on ventilators to breathe on their own. Different activities work in different ways, from boosting self-esteem to introducing brand expressions. By stimulating the vagus nerve, for example, the art reaches the heart, facial muscles and intestines, working at the same time “like a beta blocker, Botox and antispasmodic”.

People’s stories show the results of trials. We meet a depressed woman whose life changes when she takes a flyer for an “art for wellbeing” class; is a 94-year-old man with dementia, briefly transformed by the filming of Singin’ in the Rain into his old, wise-cracking movie self. The key in any situation, says Fancourt, is to develop a clinical focus from “What’s wrong?” to “What is important to them”.

The case for engaging in the arts is always economic and clinical: a positive change in well-being is worth a £1,500 salary increase; delaying the onset of dementia could save the NHS and social care £1.5bn a year. However, despite this, we see art as cheap. In 2022, technology spending in UK schools was just $9.40 per pupil per year; in 2021, public funding for creative degrees was cut in half. When adults in the US were asked how many minutes they spent doing art the day before, the most common answer (given by 95% of people) was zero. Fancourt said: “We’re now very creative. They want a ‘buckle-up moment’, a collective recognition that the lack of art has a huge impact on people’s health.”

This book raises some uncomfortable questions. Art is not a fixed object that is controlled from the outside, but an open interaction, which meets each person who encounters it with a force that exceeds the sum of its components. Do we lose something when we see art as a means rather than an end – testing its value using physical methods and measurable results? And what does it mean for people that we have to justify in this way?

Art Cure cannot provide answers. But it makes a compelling, compassionate case for broadening the way we think about medicine – to include people and communities, not just animal bodies, and to recognize that art, knowledge and purpose shape our biology as much as any medicine.