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Improving health and wellbeing

Sunderland Culture Annual Review 2025-26

We use arts, culture and creativity to support happier, healthier lives for people of all ages, improving mental wellbeing, reducing loneliness and helping people feel connected to their communities.

With special thanks to the supporters who donated to our Big Give: Arts for Impact campaign in 2025, we were able to deliver programmes across our venues with the aim to improve wellbeing for people at risk of loneliness or social isolation.

We have grown our creative health programmes to offer more low-cost and free opportunities for the community to come together and engage in arts programmes for the benefit of health and wellbeing. Whether that’s staying active with over 50s fitness classes Dance Your Heart Out and Mowbray Movers or staying social while trying something new with the Community Choir, Washington Writers Group and art clubs.

At Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, the opening of Mowbray Park Community Garden by Sunderland City Council and Just Let Your Soul Grow has allowed us to offer more outdoor activity. The people of Sunderland can surround themselves in nature and learn more about the things that grow and live among us with activities such as Bloom and Bop, the silent garden disco for kids, the Big Garden Birdwatch and open volunteer sessions.

Creative Age

Creative Age brings together participants over 50 for creative experiences, providing a safe space for connection and creative expression. Over the year, they have worked with staff and artists to try different art techniques and learn new skills including glass and watercolour painting, clay modelling and textile crafts, taking inspiration from the exhibition programme and Museum Collections.

The Creative Age group have also been involved in the Creative Coal project, a co-produced initiative led by Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens developing a resource box and activities that aim to improve wellbeing and social connection for vulnerable older adults living in Sunderland, through creative engagement with local heritage.

The Creative Coal project is part of Working Together – an 18-month Creative Health programme supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and co-delivered by the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance and Group for Education in Museums. It aimed to embed creative health practice within selected Museums and heritage organisations by supporting them to develop a pilot project in response to local health and social needs.

“This is my happy place”

Creative Age participant

A group of older adults sit around a long art workshop table strewn with leaves, glue sticks, scissors, and art materials, working on botanical collages. On the left wall, sketches are displayed, while paintings of fruit still lifes hang along the back wall under bright overhead tube lights.
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An older person wearing glasses leans over a wooden table to closely examine an antique, rounded metal object held in her hands. Beside her, a companion in glasses looks on attentively. In the foreground, a small brass miner's safety lamp sits on the table surface next to papers and another participant facing away from the camera.
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A group of eight people sit around a square table in a brightly lit room with large floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto a park. Scattered across the table are coffee mugs, notebooks, art materials, and a small toy bird. Everyone smiles toward the camera in a relaxed group portrait setting.
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Staff Wellbeing

Thanks to Sunderland City Council’s Links for Life project, we were able to invest in the health and wellbeing of the people who make our cultural spaces welcoming, creative and vibrant every day. Over the course of three months, Sunderland Culture staff, freelancers and partners took part in a programme of creative and mindful wellbeing activities while supporting local creative and health practitioners.

Sessions included holistic treatments, ceramics and crochet workshops and gong bathing, offering people time and space to pause, connect, learn something new and recharge. To strengthen our commitment to staff wellbeing, we applied to join the Better Health at Work Award scheme. This will provide a structured framework to embed health and wellbeing across the organisation, supporting a positive workplace culture and ensuring staff wellbeing remains a key organisational priority

Sunderland Culture Annual Review 2025-26