Daisy Fancourt is a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology and head of the Social Biobehavioural research group at University College London. She has a Phd in psycho-neuroimmunology and is also director of the World Health Organisation’s Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health, as well as a member of it’s technical advisory group on cultural and behavioural insights on health. Daisy led the award wining Covid 19 social study which was the UK’s largest study into the psychological and social impact of the virus.

Daisy has written three books and Art Cure is her latest one. I was so impressed by this book that it’s one of very few books that I have in hard copy, audio and kindle format. In her work on NHS wards, Daisy saw something: how the arts could influence people’s well being. So she went on to study neuroscience to prove the science to what she was seeing.

Her book, and this podcast isn’t just about art as we may understand it (ie not just looking at paintings). What we’re talking about really is creativity, imagination and curiosity and how to fire that up and engage that in ourselves and others and why it matters and how it can impact our health. 

Warning: it will make you very angry at all the cuts to the arts we see, as if the arts isn’t important and is a fluffy add on. As we’ll see it’s actually really important and vital. As Daisy says in a piece for the New Scientist: ”…if a drug had the same catalogue of benefits as the arts, we’d be telling everyone about it, fighting to get our hands on it, paying premium prices, taking it religiously every day, investing billions into further research and development."

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Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.

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