Why Art Is For Everyone

Bunwell Community Art Club July 2026 Photo Credit R Duffield

Of COURSE art is for everyone - why wouldn't it be?

I was born into a culturally engaged family that visited so many stately homes as a kid I got sick of them. I had dancing and music lessons. I was given colouring books and feltpens and crayons and craft kits and a subscription to a kids' magazine called Make & Do.

I had no idea how lucky I was.

As an adult, I fell back in love with heritage and worked in 'museums and galleries engagement'; my job was to inspire enthusiasm for art and culture and make it part of everyday life.

But making and experiencing art in the way I took for granted years ago, feels like a luxury today. When 20% of the population is in relative poverty with nearly half of those people in deep poverty, unable to afford the basics like food, energy and clothing, why would drawing, sewing, theatre or any other sort of creativity still matter?

The reason it matters is simple: it's good for your health.

I often bang on about the health benefits of engaging in creativity. It's scientifically proven that art is good for you: whether to actively create or passively consume, getting amongst some creativity provides significant mental, physical, and cognitive benefits.

That's why it's vital that art is made accessible to all - not just physically, socially and educationally, but, and this is REALLY important: financially. It needs to be affordable for all budgets. This little graphic shows the links between art and health:

Affordable, accessible, inclusive art clubs.

Affordable art interventions often fall to Community Interest Companies and Charities to provide. My own not-for profit social enterprise Community Art Clubs CIC is invested in providing art within rural communities to combat social isolation and involve people in making and experiencing art.

And in rural areas we're up against a thing called the 'rural premium'. In effect, residents must spend more money to access lower-quality services; we travel further to reach work and healthcare, we're dependent on cars because public transport is non-existent, the housing stock tends to be old and inefficient, and many house are off the energy grid, resulting in deepened fuel poverty.

Here are some of the ways Community Art Clubs CIC is helping to fix this problem:

• Community Art Clubs CIC runs in village halls and community centres where physical accessibility is rarely a problem.

• It's affordable too; for a two-hour class it has a suggested donation of £5, but my Pay What You Can Option means you can also choose to pay whatever is feasible for you in the moment, and if that happens to be zero this week, you can still come.

• It's also drop-in, so participants don't have to commit to pay for multiple sessions in advance.

• Additionally, everything you need is provided, so you don't have to buy any art materials of your own in order to join in.

• And of course, it's in village locations, so people can walk, bike or at least not drive too far for sessions, which cuts costs too.

My community art clubs are educationally accessible in a range of ways.

• Every session is different - some have step-by-step instructions while others are more loose and expressive, with all points in between covered, so there's a great variety and something to suit every learning style.

• I'm an experienced teacher, with time spent working with all ages and abilities including neurodivergent people and those with SEND or cognitive impairment.

• I run special classes for artists with more severe SEND needs, and all are welcome at the regular clubs too.

Which brings me to social accessibility. I worked in museums for nearly 20 years and I'm so, SO, hyper aware of the dreadful whiff of snobbery and exclusivity that cultural establishments can give off. While many museums (including my former employer Norfolk Museums) work extremely hard to break down barriers to engagement, 'high-falutin' arty farty stuff' can still have a bit of an image problem.

That's why all my community clubs are held in the familiarity of the communities they are for, in village halls and community centres, with no grand hallways or hushed galleries, just the promise of friendly faces, and a chance to forget everyday pressures for a couple of hours.

It's also the reason everyone gets a very warm welcome and a very ordinary cup of tea in an ordinary mug. It's a relaxed, safe space with no judgement on age, ability, gender, sexual orientation or any other factor- it's just about making art in company with fellow humans and, most importantly, having a lovely time.

Every session ends with a 'gallery' (the day's artworks all laid out together on the floor) and we stand around and casually admire what we've made. It never ceases to astonish us how differently each individual interprets the same brief, and participants are unfailingly generous and supportive in their appraisal of each others' work.

Everyone helps tidy up at the end too, building a sense of community as we share the washing up, the table-wrangling and the oversized village hall brooms, leaving the hall ready for the incoming zumba class/toddler birthday party/committee meeting.

People who've arrived in a bit of a fluster or feeling gloomy invariably leave feeling calmer and happier. I'm not able to measure their happiness in biochemical terms - I leave that to Prof. Daisy Fancourt and her team - but I can see it and sense it.

But don't just take my word for it, I've also got it in writing through testimonials left on the clubs WhatsApp group:

If you fancy a bit of this why not come along?

Community Art Clubs run Sept - July at various locations in Norfolk, UK. Dates and times are published tri-monthly on our Facebook page, and you can DM or email me for details any time.

Rachel Duffield is the Founder of Community Art Clubs CIC. Her podcast Art is Good For You is available on YouTube & Spotify. Her signature Art Life Journalling Course runs twice yearly and information about this, and her partnership working with and for museum, gallery and school communities can be found here on her website. You can contact Rachel on WhatsApp 07943476788, via email rachelduffieldart@gmail.com or by DM on Facebook.