[Commlist] CFP: Comunicazioni Sociali — Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies: Creative Care: The Role of Arts and Media in Health Practices

Comunicazioni Sociali — Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural 
Studies

Creative Care: The Role of Arts and Media in Health Practices

Edited by Giancarlo Grossi, Marta Reichlin, and Alexandra K. Rodriguez

The value of the arts in promoting health and wellbeing has been 
formally recognized since the publication of the World Health 
Organization report What is the evidence on the role of the arts in 
improving health and well-being? A scoping review (Fancourt & Finn, 
2019). Building on the WHO definition of health as “a state of physical, 
psychological and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease” 
(World Health Organization, 1948), the report underscored the 
contribution of the arts not only to disease treatment and management, 
but also to prevention and health promotion, enabling individuals and 
communities to strengthen control over and improve their own health 
(World Health Organization, 2021).
The report marked a milestone by providing scientific recognition for a 
wide range of existing experiences gathered under the umbrella of arts 
and health, which includes everyday arts engagement, professional 
artistic practice, arts therapies, and the use of the arts in 
healthcare, educational, and community settings to promote wellbeing, 
support care, strengthen social connection, and improve quality of life 
(Brinza et al., 2026; Holt et al., 2026). As a matter of fact, the arts 
and health field includes interventions that employ a wide range of 
artistic and media languages — including performing arts, cinema, visual 
arts, digital cultures, audiovisual practices, and new media — through 
both receptive and active modes of engagement (Jensen et al., 2025), 
with particular emphasis on participatory and co-creative approaches, 
whose development has been significantly enhanced by digital media 
environments that facilitate interactive, distributed, and relational 
forms of cultural production and participation. It is a field which 
encompasses practices that pursue health-related goals across different 
domains, not only therapeutic ones. Arts and media-based health projects 
may generate outcomes in healthcare, within cure and care pathways, but 
also in education, by enhancing health literacy and promoting healthy 
lifestyles, and in communities, by fostering social cohesion, civic 
participation, and reducing inequalities.
The arts and health field encompasses, but extends beyond, art 
therapies, comprising a continuum of
artistic practices and approaches, that embrace both therapeutic and 
salutogenic orientation (Fancourt et al., 2026b). While art therapies 
are grounded in clinical and psychotherapeutic frameworks, arts and 
health is more broadly oriented toward wellbeing, participation, and 
health promotion, and may involve facilitators from diverse backgrounds, 
including the arts, media, cultural, medical, and social care sectors, 
not necessarily therapeutic ones (Jensen et al., 2025). In this 
perspective, arts and media practices are not understood merely as tools 
for communication or dissemination, but as environments of experience, 
representation, and relationality capable of shaping forms of care, 
perception, and social engagement (Sabatino et al., 2026).

Following the WHO scoping review, these experiences have proliferated 
further, alongside their growing recognition by scientific and cultural 
institutions. Yet, despite the increasing number of studies, there is 
still no shared framework for analysing these experiences, particularly 
regarding impact evaluation (Bungay et al., 2024). For years, there has 
also been a growing awareness of the need to reconcile the demand for 
standardized and recognizable data for the health sector with the 
creative and non-standardized nature of artistic and media experiences 
(Daykin et al., 2017). A wide range of methodologies is used, but they 
do not always capture the specificity of the intervention, as they tend 
to focus on health outcomes more than on the processes through which 
those outcomes are generated. Indeed, there is still no shared 
theoretical framework to guide their practice and study, as the arts and 
health field remains extremely broad and diverse in its forms of design, 
implementation, mediation, and evaluation (Warran et al., 2023).
Research therefore faces the challenge of linking the specific 
contribution of different artistic and media languages to the many 
health outcomes they may generate. More recent studies have begun 
investigating the possible “active ingredients” present in the various 
art forms and media practices employed (Warran et al., 2022), that is, 
the mechanisms through which each expressive and communicative language 
contributes to the pursuit of specific health goals (Fancourt et al., 
2026a). This issue is becoming even more relevant as 
arts-on-prescription initiatives — namely, the possibility for 
healthcare systems to prescribe artistic or media-based experiences as 
part of a therapeutic or wellbeing-oriented pathway — continue to spread 
across an increasing number of countries worldwide (National Academy of 
Social Prescribing, 2024). While this practice has been well established 
in the United Kingdom for decades, many of the countries currently 
adopting it still lack the theoretical and evidence-based criteria 
needed to guide its development and implementation.

This call invites contributions that develop theoretical reflection on 
the use of arts and media languages for health purposes, considering the 
specific characteristics of each media language and linking them to the 
health potential and objectives that such interventions aim to promote 
or support. Particular attention is encouraged toward the role of 
audiovisual, digital, and interactive media in shaping contemporary 
forms of care, participation, embodiment, and health communication.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

•	Theoretical reflection on the use of artistic and media languages for 
health purposes in healthcare settings or social contexts, such as 
community settings, prisons, universities, workplaces, and therapeutic 
communities.
•	Media and visual literacy in school or educational settings to promote 
health and wellbeing, including prevention, health promotion, and social 
inclusion.
•	Theoretical reflections on medical humanities or critical analyses of 
experiences in healthcare education settings.
•	Analysis of case studies and best practices examining how artistic, 
audiovisual, and digital media interventions contribute to health, 
wellbeing, and care outcomes.
•	Evaluative and critical studies of arts-on-prescription and 
media-on-prescription programmes.
•	Historical and media-archaeological perspectives on the use of arts 
and media in health practices.

References
Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health, stress, and coping. Jossey-Bass.
Brinza, T., Morgan, N., Rodriguez, A. K., Wong, L., Sonke, J., & 
Sajnani, N. (2024). Arts & health pre-summit caucus report: How do we 
realize the potential of the arts to support health and wellbeing in the 
United States? Jameel Arts & Health Lab.
Bungay, H., Jensen, A., & Holt, N. (2024). Critical perspectives on arts 
on prescription. Perspectives in Public Health, 144(6), 363–368. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/17579139231170776
Cavaletti, F., & Terrenghi, I. (2025). Aesthetics meets oncology: A 
participatory design project to speed up time passage in chemotherapy 
through virtual reality. Aisthesis, 20(4), 185. 
https://doi.org/10.7413/2035-8466068
Daykin, N., Gray, K., McCree, M., & Willis, J. (2017). Creative and 
credible evaluation for arts, health and well-being: Opportunities and 
challenges of co-production. Arts & Health, 9(2), 123–138. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/17533015.2016.1206948
Fancourt, D. (2026). Art cure: The science of how the arts transform our 
health. Cornerstone Press. Fancourt, D., & Finn, S. (2019). What is the 
evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-
being? A scoping review. World Health Organization. 
https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/329834 Fancourt, D., Stringaris, A., & 
Sacco, P. L. (2026a). Mechanisms underpinning the mental health impact of
arts engagement. Nature Reviews Psychology, 5, 290–302. 
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-026-00545-2
Fancourt, D., West, R., Steptoe, A., Abdulla, S., Kondo, N., Sacco, P. 
L., & Ibanez, A. (2026b). Theorising the arts	as	a	health-promoting 
behaviour	[Preprint].	PsyArXiv. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ygr94_v2
Holt, N., Corvo, E., Tischler, V., & Vougioukalou, S. (Eds.). (2026). 
Routledge handbook of arts and health.
Routledge.
Jensen, A., Bungay, H., & Holt, N. J. (2025). Apples and oranges? The 
importance of recognizing heterogeneity in arts and health research 
publications. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, Article 1670166. 
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1670166
National Academy for Social Prescribing. (2024). Social prescribing 
around the world [World map of global developments in social prescribing 
across different health system contexts].
Sabatino, A. C., Berton, M., Fimiani, F., Lameris, B., Reichlin, M., 
Saladino, V., & Zdrodowska, M. (2026). Healing media: A manifesto for an 
audiovisual turn in practices of care. Medicina nei Secoli: Journal of 
History of Medicine and Medical Humanities, 38(1), 145–156.
Warran, K., Burton, A., & Fancourt, D. (2022). What are the active 
ingredients of “arts in health” activities? Development of the INNATE 
framework. Wellcome Open Research, 7, Article 10. 
https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.17490.1
Warran, K., Daykin, N., Pilecka, A., & Fancourt, D. (2023). Arts and 
health evaluation: Navigating the landscape.	Social	Biobehavioural 
Research	Group,	University	College	London. 
https://sbbresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Arts-and-Health-Evaluation-report-UCLSBB-3.pdf
World Health Organization. (2021). Health promotion glossary of terms 
2021. World Health Organization.

Submission details
September 30, 2026 – Deadline for abstract submission. Prospective 
authors are invited to submit an abstract of 300 to 400 words, together 
with a short biographical note (max. 150 words), to the following email 
addresses: (giancarlo.grossi /at/ unicatt.it); (marta.reichlin /at/ unicatt.it); 
(alexandrarodrig /at/ ufl.edu); and (redazione.cs /at/ unicatt.it).

October 15, 2026 – Authors will be notified of proposal acceptance.

January 15, 2027 – Deadline for submission of the full paper, if the 
proposal is accepted.

Submission of a paper implies that it is unpublished and not under 
consideration for publication elsewhere.
Articles must not exceed 5,000–6,000 words in English (including 
references). For editorial guidelines, please refer to the “Guide for 
the authors” section on the Comunicazioni Sociali website: 
https://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.com/pagina/guide-for-the-authors-5195.html
Contributions will be submitted through a double-blind peer review process.

Issue 1/2027 of Comunicazioni Sociali will be published in May 2027 and 
available in open access on the journal's website.


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