ART CURE: How the Arts Can Transform Our Health with DAISY FANCOURT

"Within society, we seem to have separated the arts out, so they're not so much a part of our daily lives. Often there's something that we feel we should do as a kind of leisure activity or hobby if we have enough time or if we have enough money to engage in them. And this is so fundamentally different to how humans engaged with the arts. When we look back thousands of years, it just was part of the everyday, and I feel like that's a major loss within contemporary societies."

Daisy Fancourt is a Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology at UCL and the author ofArt Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health. A pioneer in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, she directs the WHO Collaborating Center on Arts and Health, where her research influences global health policy and the integration of the arts into medical care.

(0:00) The Healing Power of the Arts: Longevity, Immunity & Wellbeing

(1:17) Singing to Daphne: How Daisy used singing to comfort her premature daughter in the ICU

(2:47) The Story of Russell: How a stroke survivor used art classes to reclaim his life, health, and identity

(5:23) A Planet of 8 Billion Artists: Tracing the evolutionary origins of creativity back 40,000 years

(8:58) Psychoneuroimmunology. Defining the biological mechanisms: how art reduces inflammation and cortisol

(12:42) Art & Longevity. How arts engagement can slow biological aging and alter gene expression

(18:24) Safeguarding Creativity. Why we should use AI for routine tasks but protect the human joy of the creative process

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

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