When Was Arts in Health?: A History of the Present

This book critically appraises the field of Arts in Health in the light of the recent public health crisis and so-called culture wars. A new term was coined in Britain in 2017 for this area of work by an All-Party Parliamentary Group: “creative health”. Williams sets this hopeful assertion against a darker backdrop of austerity, rising inequality and “Covid-nationalism”. Understandings of the field as a (multi)national phenomenon are examined through contested narratives that surround its o...