Missionaries, Parasites, Mitigators

Abstract

This chapter charts the process whereby regional Arts in Health bodies became a national network whose aim and ethos was closely allied to Tony Blair’s concept of ‘the third way’. Two local Arts in Health projects emerged out of the hardship of the 1980s to become models for a new way of conceiving the social value of art, one rolled out at a national level. Participatory art practices would be conscripted to New Labour’s proposal of a participatory democracy over the next ‘golden decade’ of funding for galleries and museums (as it was later characterised). The financial crash of 2008 led to a new iteration of ‘arts, health and well-being’ over a decade of austerity which saw the local state ‘shrunk’ and the voluntary sector enrolled to create a 'big society'. As a result, the APPGAHW report framed the power of art as one that could ‘mitigate’ the effect of (ever more unequal) social determinants of health.