Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #49 The Untapped Wellbeing Resource with Stephen Deuchar

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

“In a single glance through a picture, you can be transformed into another world” It’s no secret that we are facing unprecedented levels of anxiety. But what if there was a parallel world that offered us a different way of thinking about life? Director of the Art Fund, Stephen Deuchar, believes that museums and art galleries offer just that. He talks about the fascinating findings of a recent report that found that actively deciding to take time for cultural activities and pursuits can have a profound impact on our overall wellbeing. Stephen believes that every human could be moved by a piece of art or culture and that there is something on offer for everyone. And it needn’t take hours – even a short visit will be beneficial. After talking to Stephen, I feel inspired to explore the rich diversity that is on offer. I hope you do too! Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/artfund Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yeah, I believe that, you know, in the same way that every human being could be moved by the right piece of music, although it may take a long time to find that piece of music, I believe also every human being could be moved by a work of art or by some aspect of visual culture. Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and television presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more.

Hello and welcome to episode 49 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. Before we start today's conversation, I would like to thank the sponsors, Art Fund, who are bringing you today's episode. Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. And in the past five years alone, Art Fund has given £34 million to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. You can find out more about Art Fund and the National Art Pass at artfund.org forward slash live more. My conversation today is about whether museums

and galleries could potentially be an untapped wellbeing resource. It's no secret that we're facing unprecedented levels of anxiety. But what if there was a parallel world that offered us a different way of thinking about life? Director of the Art Fund and my guest today, Stephen Duker, believes that museums and art galleries offer just that. Stephen has been Director of Art Fund since 2010 and has been closely involved with the introduction of the National Art Pass in 2011 This is a pass that allows people to enjoy free access to over 240 museums, galleries and historic places across the UK as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions Prior to joining Art Fund, Stephen was the first director of Tate Britain and he was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2010. On the show today,

Stephen talks about the fascinating findings of a recent report that found that actively deciding to take time for cultural activities and pursuits can have a profound impact on our overall well-being. He believes that every human could be moved by a piece of art or culture and that there is something on offer for everyone and it needn't take hours, even a short visit can be beneficial. After talking to Stephen, I feel inspired to explore the rich diversity of art that's on offer in society. I hope that you do too. Stephen, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast.

Thank you. Well, we're here in your very beautiful offices, I've got to say here, just behind King's Cross, and you have been director of the Art Fund since 2010. I think it would be useful to understand at the start of this conversation, what is the Art Fund since 2010. I think it would be useful to understand at the start of this conversation, what is the Art Fund? Well, we are a charity, a national charity. We've been around since 1903, so we're entering our second century. And our job has been to help museums initially just acquire works of art for their collections, but latterly to do all kinds of things for their visiting public. And we raise our funds from our mass membership.

We have 140,000 or so members. Each of them pays an annual subscription. That produces millions of pounds for us that we give away in grants. And they do that. They join us. They support us, not just because of the good us that we give away in grants. And they do that, they join us, they support us, not just because of the good work that we do, but because we also issue the National Art Pass, which is a means of access to museums and galleries and exhibitions across the country at free or heavily discounted rates. So it works for members of the public it works for museums and it works for us as a developing national charity in some of your sort of documentation i've seen about the art fund

you you sort of put that museums and galleries are the uk's untapped well-being resource and i really love that phrase and it really speaks to me because I feel that, you know, arts and culture is a fantastic way for us to unwind, spend our, you know, our relaxation time. You know, many of us are struggling with anxiety, with stress, with overload. And I just wonder if you could expand as to why the Art Fund believe museums and galleries to be the UK's unsat well-being resource. Well museums are something different really everyone works hard everyone has complicated home lives these days people are struggling to cope with the pressures of just simply daily life and what museums offer another world. I wouldn't just say an escape from the actual world,

but a parallel, another kind of world that exists alongside our daily cares. It's a world that extends into history, takes you deep back into time through the centuries when you understand how other civilizations operated. But it also takes you into the minds and imaginations of artists and creators and curators who are operating across the cultural field as a whole and so you have the potential of a of a completely transformative experience one that not

necessarily brings you simply calm and relaxation to counteract the pressures of the modern world, but one that offers you a different, a kind of parallel way of thinking about life and its significance. So we see museums and galleries as a resource that people should think about in a new way. Do you think enough of us around the country, I guess across society full stop, are thinking about museums and galleries as a way that we can, you know, de-stress, a way that we can actually enjoy our relaxation time, enjoy a bit of a switch off from the, you know, the trials and tribulations of daily, you know, personal life and work life? Or is it something you feel the Art Fund are needing more and more to raise awareness of? Yeah, we do think it's untapped. We did a research project recently and published the findings of that called Calm and Collected. And there was some rather interesting statistics and findings that came through that. And the most revealing one in some ways was that

a very high proportion, something like two thirds of the thousands of people that were surveyed, said that at some occasion in the past, they had been to a museum or gallery as a way of relieving stress. And yet only a tiny percentage, something like five or six percent of people regularly visited museums by consequence in other words people had discovered that museums and galleries did relieve stress but they didn't then translate that into a new way of organizing their lives a way in which culture and art and museums would play a more central part so so we've taken that to heart and we feel that we need to do everything we can to get people to introduce regular museum visiting to their their life framework why is it

you think that there's such a stark difference between how many people in your survey in your research recognize how beneficial visiting museums and galleries can be versus the very, very small percentage of people who actually will regularly do that? What's going on there, do you think? Well, it may be that the reputation of museums and galleries, you know, as places of learning and culture and instruction and education is so strong and so powerful that people find it difficult to imagine them as an ongoing resource for something quite different so they may say well I went to a museum and I felt better but they probably don't naturally think that if they went to a museum regularly their

life as a whole might improve which is something that we believe rather strongly so in a sense I think it's because of the strength and importance and power that museums and galleries already have, that it's quite difficult to change the way people think about them. What would you say to some people who may be listening to this podcast thinking that, well, you know, I sort of, I was dragged around museums when I went to school. I didn't particularly enjoy them. And they sort of now in working life, you know, they're busy doing their things. And at the weekend, they might, I don't know, just be relaxing at home or in their local park or spend a lot of time on technology, let's say, and watch YouTube or spend time on social media. How would you sell, as it were, museums and galleries to someone like that?

Well, I think, you know know look at what museums are doing look at the range of museums in london alone um you know everything from the science and the natural history museum through to contemporary art spaces and historic art places like the wallace collection for example look nationally at a range of museums you know the Football Museum at one end of the spectrum, the Peer Arts Centre in Stromness in Orkney, a small art gallery at another. There is an incredible range and there is something there for everyone. And I think that people are, to some extent, hamstrung by their memories of school visits or family visits. Usually, as you say, say you know they might have gone rather against their will they probably didn't enjoy what they found very much if they

did enjoy it was probably because they were having a laugh with their friends rather than anything else when you get to be an adult and an adult you know with a with a career and a you know working life and and and a kind of complex structure around, the place of the museum or art gallery in that world can be really quite different. And people, I think, also make the mistake of thinking that going to a museum or gallery involves a massive commitment of time. They fear that to do justice to visiting, let's say, the British Museum or the Birmingham Museum and Art

Gallery they're going to have to spend a couple of hours there well I would say not true and some of the most creative and interesting form of museum visiting is in the form of someone just popping in for five minutes to see a painting that they've seen in reproduction and they want to see the real thing or to return to a piece of sculpture that they once seen in reproduction and they want to see the real thing or to return to a piece of sculpture that they once saw years ago and it had an impact on them and and to go in with no great expectation that people are not expecting everyone who looks at every work of art to have a religious experience of some kind they're often you know spiritual improvement and advance takes a while to seep through. It's not about a quick hit.

It's about something much more contemplative and slower. And I like the idea that people can just wander into galleries, walk around, stop. If they're moved to stop, keep going if they're not. And to enter into the spirit of museum visiting in a much more relaxed, less instructive way. I think one of the keys is, as we've just touched upon, is, you know, as an adult, we can choose which museums and galleries we go to. Whereas on previous family trips or, you know, on school trips, you know, that was allocated for us. We would have to attend and therefore, you know, we may still have any hangover from those experiences. But you've just said, you know, you've got, we've got sort of football museums and galleries. We've

got music museums and galleries. We've got, yes, contemporary arts. We've got all kinds of different things. I know as a parent that if I take my kids to a museum, then I really feel that their eyes have been expanded to all kinds of other possibilities. And on the way home, there's all kinds of endless questions, which really makes me happy as a parent that actually they're starting to think about things in a different way. They're getting out of their daily and weekly routine and they're being exposed to something new. So I think that's really important. Are you seeing these benefits in adults and children alike

or is the Art Fund particularly focused on one area here? Well, we're here to help museums and we believe that every single member of the population will benefit from going to a museum. So we don't discriminate. But what I would say is that I think there is a big difference between the experience of a child on a family visit to a museum and that child when they become a teenager, let's say, and they maybe go back to the same gallery that, you know, you took your son or daughter to, you know, last week to last week, in a few years' time,

they may visit on their own. And they will form a relationship with what they see that's quite different, that they're not being expected to learn about the world in a different way as a result of what they see, but they are reacting much more naturally to the kind of emotional impact of art on the walls or in showcases and so on. Yeah, absolutely. When I looked through your report, it was striking to see that over half, 53% of people in the UK felt some level of anxiety yesterday, which is remarkable if we just think about the population. And I thought this, that was really, really key. About a quarter of people felt guilty

about taking time out for themselves. And this is, as a GP, this is something I'm seeing a lot of. This is one of the reasons I've written a whole book on stress, The Stress Solution, because I feel that stress is endemic in our modern lives.

And all of us, whether we feel we're stressed or not, probably need some form of stress-busting strategy, as it were. And obviously there's many things that people can do, but your research is showing that actually spending time in the arts, spending time exposed to culture culture is actually a great way of de-stressing. I mean, to look at things in sort of broader sociological terms, I suppose you could argue that Britain has a kind of Puritan past when, you know, the idea of the work ethic became very strong and that's, you know, stretching back across several centuries really and then re-injected with a new kind of energy,

not necessarily positive energy, in the era of Thatcher towards the end of the 20th century, this sense that to be a productive, valuable human being, you need to keep yourself close to the grindstone. It's all about work and and productivity and output and that therein lies prosperity therein lies meaning to life and i think that what's interesting about the 21st century is that that is now being superseded by a new kind of ethos which is much more about balance and wholeness and the idea of a kind of life portfolio where

you mix together components of which work is one and productivity and everything that comes out of that of course is very important but that your time on this planet you know is here for you to use in lots of different ways too and i think in in in in spiritual terms i think that's a very very important uh and sophisticated advance for us to be making as human beings yeah i think steven you raised lots of interesting points there and i do think there's something about how life has progressed into the 21st century where we have felt that the more we do, the more productive we are. Let's not even take lunch breaks anymore. Let's work through. Let's keep, you know, if we're commuting to work, let's do our emails on the commute, on the way home so that we're

getting ahead. And we almost need to reframe this whole idea that, you know, taking some time off or diverting your attention to something else is also productive because there's quite a good science on that, that actually if you stopped, you know, stop doing a task that you are, you know, stop, let's say doing your work tasks and you divert your attention to something else. Actually, it's incredible. A different part of the brain switches on. You help to solve problems. You help to be more creative. And we just can't work, work, work our way into the ground. And I know, for example, that I've spoken about before, that when we stop focusing on a task, let's say we stop focusing on the spreadsheet we've got to do at work.

And let's say we go for a walk for 10 minutes without our phones. go for a walk for 10 minutes without our phones, a part of the brain called the default mode network goes into overdrive, which is surprising because we used to think that the brain will go to sleep when we weren't focusing on a task. But what happens, that part of the brain is responsible for solving problems and coming up with creative ideas. So that's why so many of us come up with ideas or these great ideas when, you know, we're doing something else. And I imagine the same would be for arts. If you, let's say you're working in an office Monday to Friday and on a Saturday morning you pop into a museum for half an hour. I suspect that actually some of those problems you couldn't solve in the week would actually probably just come to you whilst you're focusing on something else.

I think that's true and if you I mean just take a couple of museums I mean thinking in London let's say the National Gallery or in Edinburgh the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art they're two just places where within two minutes of arriving in those buildings you could find yourself, in the case of National Gallery in 16th century Italy, looking at images of saints and people having religious experiences. You could go to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and find yourself looking at Damien Hearst and butterflies. And your view of the natural world around you and the human condition would be jolted in some particular way.

And those are huge steps away from the reality that most people come from. So in a single glance, you can be through a picture, you can be translated, transformed into another world. And I agree with you. I think that offers tremendous potential creative energy because certainly speaking personally my best ideas do not come to me when i'm doing normal stuff you know routine stuff they come to me when i know i'm jolted out of the complacency of my own day-to-day existence, if you like, and I'm challenged by something. Yeah, I think that's the same for all of us, actually. And I think one of the,

you know, as I was writing my book on stress, I reflected a lot on where these stresses are in the modern world. And one of the things that I really thought about is how our downtime has been eroded out of society. This whole idea where we could just daydream or not be doing something specific, you know, because of technology, because of emails, because of smartphones now, any bit of downtime, you know, even if we're standing in a cafe waiting to order a coffee, our heads are stuck on our phone, we're reacting, we're actually focused on something and i think there's something about bringing downtime back and recognizing that

actually you know downtime is good for us downtime is productive if i notice that um your common collected reports which is it available for the public to see at all yeah it's available uh online on the art funds website um artfund.org yep it can be downloaded from there guys i would recommend you actually take a look at that it's a super interesting report it's uh you know relatively straightforward to understand and and uh just see what research has been carried out but uh professor i think it's professor paul dolan who you know i've read one of his earlier books i think it's Professor Paul Dolan, who, you know, I've read one of his earlier books, I think it's Happiness by Design. I thought it was absolutely fantastic book. He also endorsed this report, didn't he, and got involved. Was that something, you know, was that to try and look at the health impact of, you know, of getting involved with art and museums? Yes. I mean, one of the things that, one of the accusations that you could level at a charity like ours, if you were being unkind, was to say, well, it's all a bit elitist,

isn't it? That you are, you're serving the world of, you know, fine arts and you're raising money to buy extremely expensive objects and so on. And in the end, there are many more important causes. There's life and death and health and so on. So just tell me why exactly arts and museums do matter. And so, you know, as a charity that doesn't want to be complacent for a moment, we began to think much harder about, if you like, the social value, the human value of museums and galleries beyond, you know, the traditional sense that they are the national collection,

their collections of collections and works of art and so on that are maintained for posterity to, so people understand how history works. We were rather interested to discover the kind of human impact they could have. And so, you know, we talked to Paul Dolan about the possibility of doing some research, and that's really how the project came about. Did Paul help actually sort of implement the research?

Was that one of Paul's roles, or did he help to interpret it for you? Yeah, he helped with the interpretation, and he helped to add messages, if you like, to the data that was coming out of the report. This idea that every individual should try to create 30 minutes in every day when they do something different. And that something different should routinely, regularly include museum and gallery visiting. And I would say, you know, moving on from that, it's not necessarily just about going to one museum regularly. It's about exposing oneself to the potential and possibilities of museums of all kinds.

You know, if you like art, don't just go to art museums, you know, go to history museums and science museums as well and natural history. There is this wider world that's waiting yeah and i think there's so many things i want to talk to you about i mean that makes me feel makes me think a little bit about how we've all got you know many of us feel in a rut these days days turn into weeks weeks turn into months we do the same thing we look at the same social media feeds we go you know we eat the same sort of foods. And there

is something about doing something different and what it does for our brain in terms of different neural connections and pathways. And I feel what you're saying is to try to, yes, try and engage in culture, but try different things, which I think is really important. You mentioned life and death. There's clearly lots of very important things to do with life and death in the world. But we're pretty good now in Western society in terms of life and death on so many levels. And where I think art and culture come in so much is that they're part of the fabric of our lives

and our experiences and what cultures have lived before us, what cultures are going to live after us, what can we learn from looking back into the past. And I think in many ways, I think it's never been more important as it is now, particularly in this technological world. In fact, do you feel that in this digital world that we're now living in, there is something unique about the sort of analog experience of visiting a museum or a gallery? I do. I mean, I've been in the museum world previously as a curator and director and so on for a long time. And one of the things that I remember we all worried about in the 1990s, when digital technology began to take off, was that somehow the museum would be superseded, that people would be able to get images of works of art and collections of

different kinds. And so they wouldn't need to see the real thing. And was this effectively the beginning of the end of museums and of course precisely the reverse has occurred what digital technology has done is it's made it possible for everyone to be aware of the incredible range and depth of stuff there is to see and that people then want to follow that up with a visit and they wouldn't keep doing that if the experience of the visit wasn't somehow very impactful and i would say an important point to make is that you know in viewing what museums have to offer it's not necessarily always a calming even pleasant experience sometimes looking at a work of art

can be deeply disturbing and upsetting and I would argue can also be very beneficial. Photography often contains very shocking images that make one think about the human condition in different ways. Think of artists like Jake and Dinos Chapman who you know the shock value of their work is fantastically high, and part of their impact on the world has been precisely because of that. And so it's the complexity of the experience of art, which I find intriguing, and it's why it's so rich. So you don't necessarily know that when you go to a museum, you don't know exactly what kind of experience you're going to have, and it could be one that involves laughter.

There's a lot of humour to be found in art. It could be something much more profound. It could be something very banal. And it's that, you know, almost infinite range of possibilities that I find so interesting. Yeah, I think there's something really magnetic these days about, really um magnetic these days about you know those real life experiences because so much of our world is digital now i'm i'm intrigued by that so are our sort of visitor numbers going up now you is that right uh visitor numbers going up now compared to how what they used to be oh yeah i mean if you look at the the number of visitors to museums today as compared to 20 years ago let's say the kind of pre-digital era or just immediately produced earlier is they've gone up hugely that's so fascinating steven to me so fascinating that we can look on our phone now at images of

the paintings that we might see in a museum or a gallery um Yet there is something, I think we are craving a, you know, connection. We're craving something more than what we see on our computers or our phones. And that may in some part be related to why people are going so much. It's funny, like things like vinyl, you know, and even CD players are coming back into fashion because people and myself, I certainly include myself in this as a music fan. There's something about the way digital has made music so in many ways disposable. You can get any track you want. You can delete it. You can easily flick between things.

Whereas for me, there's a certain magic in actually holding the album. Well, and of course, live performance. Live performance. Compared today with 20 years ago, I mean, now that's where everyone makes their money, isn't it? Exactly. Live performance, whereas 20 years ago, it was exactly the opposite.

The tours were where you lost your money and record sales were where you recovered it. Yeah, and it's not ironic that any tour now that you see on, you know, you can see footage of whatever musical tour you want to see on youtube you could watch that yet still the tendencies are growing because we're craving something about that human experience about bonding with other people and i guess that leads to a wider point which is do you feel that there is a social element as well when people go to a museum and gallery? And is that really, really important, particularly with rising levels of loneliness in society?

Well, it's certainly true that a lot of museum visiting is done as a social experience. So people, in other words, go in groups of two or more people and quite a lot of people go in pairs. But by no means, that's not the case by any means, exclusively the case. You know, single visits, you know, the quiet contemplative experience of an individual communing with what they see is as valid as, you know, the animated conversation with a group of friends in front of a display. There is no single way, there is no right way to visit. But I do believe the social dimension to be generally important.

And I think when it comes to special exhibitions, and exhibitions are something that we at the Art Fund support very strongly and our members who with their art passes, use the discounts and so on that we offer as a means of consuming exhibitions. And the number of great art and other exhibitions across the museum world is incredible at the moment.

And they are events of almost a kind of participatory kind. Sometimes it can be a bit enervating because you could be queuing behind people to, you know, large numbers of people to see a particular work. But just the energy that can be generated by large numbers of people enjoying what they see, animated by what they find, can be really, you know, life enhancing. Yeah, I think there's something about being in a group of people, you know, being out with other people who've got similar interests, similar passions, whether you know them or not,

you know that clearly there is some sort of common desire for them to be there. There's something special about that. I recently spoke to the CEO of Parkrun and Parkrun is this big global movement that actually is really, as he puts it, a social intervention masquerading as a running event. It's really about that community feeling. And I do feel that there's something about this, but in this era of loneliness, when, you know know many of us have you know hundreds if not thousands of social media friends yet no one's had dinner with on a Sunday night and I think I could see how museums and galleries could play a role here for people to actually go

and spend some of their leisure time doing something with other like-minded people. I know parts of the report was talking about how we can reframe the idea of a museum or gallery visit. And I was intrigued by the term of a micro visit. Can you tell me what a micro visit is? Well, I think I would say a micro visit, a typical micro visit is someone popping into a museum for literally three minutes to look at a single work of art or display or just something that they find attracts their attention the moment they walk in, or as I was saying earlier, something that they might have previously seen

that they want to renew their acquaintance with. And sometimes just the kind of hits that you get from stepping off the street into another world and gazing intently at something for a short period can be very affecting and restorative and powerful. And so that's, yeah, that's what the micro visit can be. Yeah, I like it. You know, taking away this idea that it has to be a whole day out or the whole afternoon. You can just pop in and actually experience some of the things it has to offer. You mentioned before about the potential to be, potential people say this is quite elitist and only a certain section of society are interested in this sort of thing.

In terms of museum and gallery attendances, have you noticed that there is a difference between the socioeconomic status of attendees? You know, are we seeing particular groups attending museums and galleries more? And, you know, I guess the follow-up question would be, if there are certain groups who are not attending as much as we would like, what can we do to try and make it more attractive for them to do so?

The spectrum is broadening all the time. There's no question about that. But equally, I would acknowledge that there are some people who think that museums and galleries are not for them. There can be quite scary places. I mean, you know, when the Victorians built all those museums across the country, they put big Roman style porticos on them to make them look as imposing and important as possible. And that these days has a somewhat negative effect. So there are some people who don't want to go to museums and find the process of conversion somewhat difficult. But what I would say, again, looking at the kind of recent history of this country, and to some extent, you know,

beyond this country, there has been a kind of revolution, I think, of taste. People are more interested in the contemporary. There used to be this sense in Britain that we worship the past, you know, we were a country that lived on our traditions and on our heritage. And I think perhaps beginning from the 1990s when the young British artists, Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and so on came to prominence and they were full of humour and vitality and energy

celebrating, you know, the moment, rather perhaps like the kind of punk era did in music. And slowly that began to have an impact on mainstream society, that people began to think in terms of what was great about Britain's present and great about Britain's modern production. And that led to a kind of, I would say, a spirit of informality and relaxation and energy that infused even the most traditional museums.

You know, you go to the British Museum or the V&A today and you will not find, you know, a kind of stolid, slow, silent place. You'll find a place teeming with vitality and energy. And I would say that comes from the kind of contemporary spirit which infuses museums. Now, all of those things are going to help break down prejudices against visiting and will continue, I believe,

to extend the social spectrum of people who visit. So, you know, I still wish everybody in the country would go to museums. We're not that far away from that, actually. You know, a very high proportion of people have been at least once. And on a Saturday, and take any Saturday in the football season, you'll find that more individuals

are going to museums than football matches, believe it or not. I mean, that's an incredible statistic. That surprises me. And if you had given me a sort of a true-false sort of, you know, dilemma on that, I would have said false. Well, I may be making this up. No, I'm sure you're not. but I'm sure you're not you you're clearly very driven to um really spread the word of um art and culture and how you know and and what kind of effects it can have yes on our individual well-being but also on society as a whole I think it's really that important um I like in your

report that we you sort of talk about we've got to give ourselves permission not to like or understand everything on display you know and that really that really is about going in there with that open mind and thinking actually not going to love everything but actually being exposed so it will have some benefits and um it's remarkable to see that the overall research that you that you did show that actively deciding to take time for cultural activities and pursuits can have a profound impact on overall well-being. And, you know, as a doctor, I see so many people day in, day out who, you know, their lives just happen.

They're on a treadmill from week to week, from day to day, from month to month. And they're so focused on what they need to do. They forget about things that they would love to do or they would like to do. And once you start to, this is something I spend a lot of time doing with my patients is sort of trying to identify what's missing in their life. And once you can help persuade them that it's important for them to do that, it is amazing how many downstream so-called medical problems can start to improve when people actually, you know, have that rich tapestry of life and different cultural experiences. And I have also seen that when I worked in Oldham, which is, you know, I worked in a practice there,

And I have also seen that when I worked in Oldham, which is, you know, I worked in a practice there, which is, it was a pretty deprived area in terms of income. Lots of my patients were on benefits at the time. But, you know, when we talk about these different socioeconomic groups, actually doing things that involve culture, that involve community, doing things with other people, had a profound impact on their overall well-being. And I guess you feel that museums and galleries can play a similar sort of role. I do, but I don't believe it's possible to promise or describe exactly the kind of benefit that the people are going to get. And I think that one of the barriers that exists to people visiting museums is that they don't really know what kind of experience they're going to have or I would say they're not even sure they're going to have an experience that they will consider meaningful and that's just getting back to your

your point about people thinking that museums and galleries are maybe not for them and how we how we begin to change thinking on those lines and and i'm completely you know comfortable with the idea that for some people a visit to a museum may not be a very profound experience it may just simply be a a fairly pleasant one it could be that the best bit of the museum visit is actually going to the shop or having a cup of tea afterwards or if you're a four-year-old child it's running at high speed from one end of the gallery the other it's not looking at the stuff it takes different people in in different ways and so you know if i was you know in your position as a doctor trying to help individuals i wouldn't be

saying to them you know go to the tape next week it'll change your life i would be saying go and try it out go to the tape but also go, go to other kinds of places, look at culture in all its forms. And, you know, you'll soon begin to discover whether it has an impact on your life or not. And I think this, you know, we often say to people, you know, no experience is required. No expertise is needed in order to get something for art. Art is what it means to the viewer. It's not about the artist's intention. People often think that the first job to be tackled when you look at a work of art on the wall is to say,

what's it about? What do the artists mean? I really don't believe that. I think the first task is to level with yourself and say, what impact is this work having on me? And sometimes the answer is it isn't having an impact on me, and that's fine because then you move on to the next one. You know, Stephen, it's making me think about our analogy with music again in the sense, of course, music is a form of culture.

It's not dissimilar to museums and galleries on one level. But, you know, for people who think museums are not for them or galleries are not for them, very few of us would say that music is not for us, right? If there was, you know, if your best friend raves about, you know, a particular album and you listen to it and sometimes you think, oh, that's not really my cup of tea, that you don't go off music per se.

You just, you recognise it. You recognise it. Actually, that doesn't sort of stimulate me in the same way as you think oh that's not really my cup of tea that you don't go off music per se you just you recognize that you recognize actually that actually that doesn't sort of stimulate me in the same way it simulates my body exactly you don't feel remotely guilty if you hear a piece of music you don't like it exactly move on quickly yeah whereas i don't quite feel that societally we look at art and museums in the same way and maybe that's quite a nice analogy for people is that, hey, try it out with an open mind. If something resonates with you, great. If it doesn't, fine.

But there might be another museum or gallery where it does resonate with you. And, or as you've already said, it doesn't matter. If it doesn't, there's still something about that experience, that exposure to something different. I think there's something quite powerful in that. Yeah, I believe that, you know, in the same way that every human being could be moved by the right piece of music, or it may take a long time to find that piece of music.

I believe also every human being could be moved by a work of art or by some aspect of visual culture. art or by some aspect of visual culture i mean that's incredible and i guess even on on that note um which is really empowering for people and i hope people who are listening to this some people who may not have visited a museum or gallery recently maybe have you know either a positive or a neutral or even a negative memory you might be thinking well actually you know what maybe this is something i can now do that the sort of art fund has something called the national art pass um and I think the idea is to make visiting more affordable and you know to sort of get what to really encourage more attendees can you tell me a little bit about the National Art Pass, how long it's been going for, what's the idea behind it? Yeah, well if you join the Art Fund, you get a magazine, you get a huge array of digital services telling you what's going on all over the country, but the principal

component is a piece of plastic, the National Art Pass, which gives you free admission to a whole range of museums and galleries that have Pass, which gives you free admission to a whole range of museums and galleries that have charges or discounted admission, particularly to exhibitions. So if you go to an exhibition at Tate Modern and the ticket is £20, you get in for £10. So the cost of buying the National Art Pass, which for someone under 30 is £45.

For the year. For the year. For the year. It's very, very quickly recovered. You just need to go to a couple of exhibitions and you've got your money back. So it's a way of incentivising individuals to go and visit, which the museums love because their visitors increase. And the money we raise through selling the pass

and selling membership provides you know provides the program of grants that we give to museums to help them buy works of art tour exhibitions make publications have conferences uh and so on so we're a kind of uh a middleman if you like we're using public enthusiasm for art and museums to generate cash to support museums, but also at the same time to deliver to our members, to the National Art Pass holders, an amazing world of special access. So there's a discount for the under 30s, which is £45. And for the sort of 30s and above? 45 pounds and for the sort of 30s and above uh it's 70 pounds is full and then there is a you know you can go as a double which i think is 105 you can have a plus one membership and so on so there's a whole range of things but the main thing is that it's it's priced at a level which means that all you need to do is to go to a museum a few times a year and you've got your money back

so just in kind of cash terms it makes sense but what we're trying to do is something slightly more profound than simply give financial value we're really trying to use this pass the word pass is is carefully thought through it's like a passport to another kind of world you know it's a bridge to something different beyond one's people people's ordinary lives yeah i really like that i like that idea and that concept and just hearing you describe the the art pass and yes it's for the individual to get more access and and you know better value access but but the one that really stood out for me is actually by contributing to it your help you know we're helping to support this movement to get culture more mainstream in society to get more people from different backgrounds exposed to

it because ultimately all these things need money all these things need resources to get the best arts to actually you know probably to look after the museums you know the the day-to-day admin of actually running a sort of building, I'm sure it doesn't come cheaply. So I think, yeah, for people who are interested, yes, I think it's going to help you individually, but I think it also helps societally as well. Yeah, it's, you know, if you like, it's a kind of ethical purchase. It's a product which is fantastic for you. It's a really great thing to have and you're going to gain from it financially and spiritually but also in the process of acquiring it you are doing good for others

you're supporting museums and therefore other museum audiences so it's a very you know sociable thing to be doing from all points of view. Has your research shown that there's any gender difference between people attending museums and galleries do Do more men or do more women attend, or do you not have that sort of data? I believe it doesn't come out in this survey, but I believe that there is a slight female bias in relation to art museums and a slight male bias in relation to science and history museums, which you could say is fairly predictable in the way that society has evolved. But I do know those things are changing. And I don't believe that, you know, you could easily make generalizations on a gender basis about most

museums these days. One of the striking things for me, when I read your report, was this direct correlation between the frequency of museum visits and our reported well-being with higher life satisfaction results for those visiting once a month or more that's really powerful so you know we're essentially saying there's a correlation I guess I must be very careful not to sort of imply causation here but there's a correlation between people who regularly visit museums and you know having a greater satisfaction with life. Has any of the research directly looked at benefits on our health when people visit museums and galleries?

Well, as I say, I think we'd all have to be careful not to make... Over-reg it. Yeah, two wild claims. But for the people that do regularly visit, they at some level actually become dependent on it because they find that their lives are given more balance and a greater sense of depth and richness. And therefore they find that if they don't regularly expose themselves to culture of this kind, then their lives seem incomplete in some ways. So, you know, we're only reporting what people tell us, which is that if you go to museums regularly, you look at art and museum displays and exhibitions regularly,

you know, your life will potentially feel calmer and fuller. And, you know, we're pleased with that, that, you know, the results are confirming what we've long believed. Just thinking back, the way you're describing it and the way you talk about the National Art Pass and the word passport, you know, we said that travel broadens the minds. I know for me personally, when I travel, when I'm away somewhere else, you think about things in a different way. You can reflect on your own life differently. You come back with new ideas and new concepts i think oh you know maybe i could do this a little bit differently

and in many ways we can get some of those benefits by you know by escaping our our daily sort of normal world and entering the world of a museum or gallery because it will take us to a different place very much like travel on one element without you know having to get on a plane and do security checks and things like that you're quite right it's it's potentially transformative i suppose you could say from two points of view firstly intellectually and secondly aesthetically you know you can see something that you find very beautiful and that can be give intense, can have very positive, enhancing effects just by experiencing beauty or colour in a particular form. And intellectually, when you think about meaning

or your view of the world is jolted slightly by an image that, as I was saying earlier, you might find disturbing as well as profoundly moving. But from those two different points of view the power to transform you from where you are in your actual life to where you are in your head or your eye or your mind is really important. Well Stephen look I think the work you and your team here at the Art Fund are doing is incredible I think it's very much needed you've certainly helped me reframe the way I look at museums and galleries. In fact, I probably say I probably haven't been as much as I would like to. In fact, I'd probably say

it's not something I regularly do, but I'm going to commit that I think this very weekend, I am going to now visit something local in Manchester, which is where I live, with my wife, maybe when my kids are there around, we'll see. Because I can see the benefits. And like many people these days, I do feel overwhelmed from time to time. I do feel that life is stressful. And this could be a great thing for me to get in to for my personal well-being, for hopefully my family's well-being as well. Any final words, Stephen, for people listening to this who might feel inspired anything you know any any last words to actually see if people will actually go and you know maybe get this art pass and actually go and visit some museums and galleries

yeah i would say make a plan you know first of all decide that you're going to devote a certain amount of time every day or every week or every month to looking at museums, looking at art in a new way, even if you've never done it before. Just take the plunge and make that commitment. Secondly, do a bit of research, find out what's going on. The Art Fund website, artfund.org, will tell you what's going on in museums all over the country. Thirdly, make a plan with your friends or your family and say okay we're going to do this together um and once you've found out where things are you've found out who you want to go with you then buy your art pass um and off you go um and yeah give it a try well thank you

steven appreciate your time today i think it's a very much needed uh movement i wish you and the art fund all the best with this. For people listening who do take the plunge and do set a date, like Stephen has suggested, we would love to know. The Art Fund are on social media. I'm on social media. Please do tag us both. Let us know what you thought of today's episode. Let us know which museum or gallery you're going to visit. And also let us know, of of course if you do join up and buy one of these national arts passes thanks for your time today steven thank you that concludes today's episode of the feel better live more podcast i hope you enjoyed today's conversation and that

it has hopefully been a great reminder about the existence of museums and galleries and how they might serve as a fantastic stress reliever. I really do think that for many of us, they are an untapped wellbeing resource. You can see everything that Stephen and I discussed today by going to the show notes page with this episode, drchastity.com forward slash arts fund. As always, do let Stephen and I know on social media what you thought of today's episodes. You can find Stephen on Twitter using the handle at Art Fund and me in all the

usual places. Please do use the hashtag feel better live more or FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. You might be interested to know that Art Fund has their own podcast, find your comments. You might be interested to know that Art Fund has their own podcast, Meet Me at the Museum, which is also hosted on Acast. It's funny and conversational and fantastic if you need a little bit of inspiration to plan your museum visit. If you want to find out more about Art Fund and the National Art Pass, you can visit artfund.org forward slash live more. Now, stress is a topic that came up a lot in my conversation with Stephen today. And as a doctor, I'm seeing symptoms of stress every single day in my practice. That was one of the big motivations for me to write my new book, The Stress Solution.

This book helps you to identify the four big stress superhighways that exist in the 21st century and importantly gives you simple actionable tools that will help you live a happier and calmer life. You can order your copy of the Stress Solution right now in paperback, Kindle or in the audiobook which I am narrating. All international book links for the Stress Solution are available at drchastity.com forward slash book. are available at drchastity.com forward slash book. If you do enjoy my weekly podcast, please do consider leaving a review, which really helps us support the show.

You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you can simply tell your friends about the show. Your support is very much appreciated that's it for today i hope you have a fabulous week make sure you have pressed subscribe and i'll be back next week with my latest conversation remember you are the architects of your own health making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.