What happens when we examine cultural well-being using the same indicators as health services or other everyday services? Do experiences gained in art lend themselves to measurability? Answers to these questions are provided by extensive assessment material on cultural well-being, which was collected under the coordination of Taike in the Well-being from culture for the elderly – IKO projects 2021–2023.
The IKO projects implemented mainly group art and cultural activities for the elderly, ranging from drama to visual arts and clown activities to dance. More than 1,000 elderly people from all over Finland responded to the project's participant surveys, from northern Lapland to Espoo. The aim was to find out how the participants experienced the activities and whether the project produced the desired well-being effects.
In addition to the potential impacts of the operations, the evaluation ended up mapping the same issues that are usually studied about services, i.e. willingness to recommend and satisfaction with operations. Health services are characterised by high customer satisfaction and customers' willingness to recommend the service. This can be concluded to be due to the fact that the service has been necessary and helpful.
The results speak for themselves
Although it may seem daunting to evaluate the significance of art and culture for indicators called CSAT and NPS, the aim of the evaluation was to obtain data comparable to other services, such as health services. CSAT is a general measure of customer satisfaction in services. The international average of the healthcare CSAT indicator is about 80%. When the responses of the IKO activities were converted into a CSAT result, the average was a whopping 95%. The NPS score, on the other hand, is used to measure willingness to recommend a service. In healthcare, the NPS score is 65 and it is generally better than in other services. Converted into NPS, the average result of IKO operations was 67.
In addition to these figures, the data showed that cultural activities had an impact on the participants' well-being: the experience of loneliness decreased, participation increased, mood improved and functional capacity strengthened. The effects on well-being were examined quantitatively and qualitatively through the experience of loneliness and well-being and life satisfaction. In addition to the participants, the impacts are assessed by artists and representatives of partners, for example in the wellbeing services counties.
The results of the evaluation of the IKO projects confirm that culture is an effective tool for increasing the well-being of older people.
The results of the evaluation of the IKO projects confirm that culture is an effective tool for increasing the well-being of older people. Three explanatory factors can be seen behind the convincing results: outreach work, high-quality activities and art professionals. As my colleague Matti Selin, one of the developers of the outreach cultural elderly care model, has rightly pointed out, there is a difference between darts being thrown and making art. Darts is nice, but the special feature of art and culture seems to be that it benefits most from those who are most at risk of marginalisation and isolation. The most effective action is when we reach those for whom culture and art have the most to offer. We succeeded in this by doing outreach work.
The observed effects on well-being seem to be linked to customer satisfaction and willingness to recommend. This, in turn, shows that the operations have been of high quality: the service providers, i.e. the artists, know how to meet people and take into account the needs of the participants, while at the same time acting open-mindedly and boldly, offering new experiences.
Information matters
Although the effects of culture on well-being have been scientifically proven, there has been a gap between researched knowledge and everyday observations. With the evaluation, this knowledge gap narrowed significantly. At the same time, we were able to have interesting discussions about the significance of information with artists and various stakeholders. We consider who is the right party to collect information, what is the role and responsibility of the artist in the evaluation, and which questions can provide us with information on precisely those topics that we consider important for cultural well-being.
Despite the fact that cultural well-being activities have been carried out for a long time, they have not yet reached an established position.
We shared the common hope that we would already have sufficient evidence of the impact of culture and art and not have to prove it again and again. Despite the fact that cultural well-being activities have been carried out for a long time, they have not yet reached an established position. Information matters, which is why it is vital to further strengthen the importance of cultural well-being through it, too.
A new step in the evaluation could be to produce more accurate numerical data on the impacts by measuring the realisation of participation in activities, functional capacity before and after, and accumulated resources. The experience of loneliness is still a significant indicator and it could be meaningful to study it, for example, through the emergence of social contacts. For artists, information related to the content of the activities could be interesting: which content produces the most desired results and how they meet the artists' own artistic perspectives.
To the edge of perceived well-being
Art and culture have been found to have a positive effect especially on perceived well-being. Perceived well-being has a significant impact on how healthy, satisfied and full we feel in our lives. The perceived well-being is particularly aptly illustrated by the comment of an elderly person who participated in the activities of the Hospital Clowns who visit social and health services: "I forget my illness when clowns come to visit me."
Such experiences are especially significant as we age, when life increasingly offers difficult points of change and renunciation. Based on evaluation data and project experiences, we can outline a chain of influence in which outreach work helps to find vulnerable people for whom art professionals provide high-quality services. This ensures vital encounters that increase the experience of well-being, which in turn enables functional and satisfied years at the end of life.
Based on my own experience in cultural well-being and its evaluation, I can finally recommend three things: art for increasing the well-being of the elderly, evaluation data for concreting the significance of cultural well-being, and shared encounters around culture for all of us!
The IKO – Well-being from culture to the elderly project coordinated by Taike was implemented in 2021–2023 with funding from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. The IKO projects promoted the cultural wellbeing of older people and developed a model of cultural services for the elderly in the midst of the wellbeing services county reform. The target group of the IKO projects was people over the age of 65, for whom cultural activities would be particularly useful due to their life situation and functional capacity. The activities of the IKO projects spread to a total of 15 wellbeing services counties, and an estimated 130 art professionals worked in the projects. The evaluation of the activities of the projects was carried out in cooperation with Kukunori ry using the Pokka evaluation tool.