Are Arts & Crafts Good for Wellbeing?

​Welcome to the results of the Ardington School of Crafts Wellbeing Study 2018 (as featured in Craft & Design Magazine March 2018)
 
We had over one hundred responses to the study from people aged 25 to over 75. The largest group of study respondents was aged between 55 and 64. Strikingly, there were very few men – just four out of a hundred were male. Why was this? The invitation to take the study was sent to a wide variety of people and aimed to achieve a good spread of age and gender. On social media, it reached an audience that was made up of 37 percent men. Perhaps one reason that we had such a small number of men respond is that not enough men yet realise how important it is to be creative and that, as we will see from the results, creativity has such a strong beneficial impact on health and mental wellbeing-being, evidenced by our respondents in a long list of positive outcomes. The student base here at Ardington School also reflects a much smaller percentage of men than women attending courses.
 
Our view is that more people, (especially more men!), should take up a creative activity in order that they can benefit from better health and wellbeing, feel less anxiety but a stronger sense of purpose and achievement. The study results show conclusively that people feel much happier, have a stronger sense of purpose and are more relaxed because they are involved in arts and crafts activities. Most interestingly, almost half of  the people in the study are now making an income from their crafts. This is becoming more important as we live longer, and need to finance that additional lifespan. Why not earn money by doing something you love and makes you happy?

​You can see the full results of the study here, and read the commentary on the findings below.
 
What types of art and creativity do people enjoy?
The study results showed that most people enjoy more than one art or craft activity, on average almost 3.5 each. The top activities in our study included textiles and needlework (69%), painting, drawing and illustration (37%), and mixed media work (28%). Also, very popular were calligraphy (23%), ceramics, clay and mosaics (23%) as well as paper crafts (25%). Jewellery making and metalwork also scored highly (22%), as did photography (22%) and printmaking (21%). Garden design and glasswork were favoured by around 15% of respondents, and finally willow-work (12%), writing (10%), floral art (8%), stonework and woodwork (4%) and furniture (3%). There may be some gender related preferences in these results, as a deeper review of the individual answers for men shows a preference for painting and printmaking in this group, albeit a small sample.

​What types of arts and crafts do people do?

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