On what is happening when we engage in the arts
Reflections on a new review in Nature Reviews Psychology
Dr Carla van Laar
March 2026
What’s actually happening when we engage in the arts?
A newly published review by Fancourt, Stringaris & Sacco in Nature Reviews Psychology brings together interdisciplinary research to map the mechanisms through which arts engagement supports mental health.
Image credit:
Fancourt, D., Stringaris, A., & Sacco, P. L. (2026). Mechanisms underpinning the mental health impact of arts engagement. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1-13.
What stands out immediately is the scale and complexity of this work.
Rather than offering a simple explanation, a reductive map, or a causal theory, the authors identify around 50 interacting mechanisms across emotional, cognitive, biological, social and behavioural domains.
Importantly, these are not presented as isolated processes.
They are understood as interconnected, co-occurring, and context-dependent.
Moving beyond simple explanations
This paper shifts the conversation about “how the arts work” in an important way.
It moves us away from linear cause-and-effect thinking and towards a more complex understanding:
- that arts engagement activates multiple processes simultaneously
- that these processes interact and reinforce one another over time
- and that the conditions in which arts engagement occurs matter.
The authors emphasise the role of context — social, cultural, relational and environmental — in shaping how these processes unfold.
They also introduce the idea of an “arts exposome”, recognising that everyday creative experiences, not only formal programs or clinical encounters, contribute cumulatively to mental health and wellbeing.
Reading this through a practice lens
For those of us working in creative and experiential ways, much of this will feel familiar, because we have experienced their co-occurrence in practice.
In my own research, Seeing Her Stories, similar themes emerged through a very different inquiry process.
In particular:
- the role of context as expansive and meaning-making
- the interplay of risk and safety
- and the centrality of relationship, connection and co-creation
For example, I wrote:
“Contexts are expansive… including landscapes, culture, relationships, values, imaginings and metaphoric contexts.”
“We were… co-creating supportive, resonant, empowering and artistic contexts together.”
“We are in each other’s worlds… connected, part of each other and co-creating one another.”
These insights point toward something that resonates strongly with this new review:
Creative engagement is not a linear process,
but a relational, contextual, co-creative field of experience.
Converging understandings
What I find particularly compelling is that these two bodies of work arrive at closely aligned understandings through very different ways of knowing:
- large-scale interdisciplinary synthesis
- and arts-based, relational inquiry grounded in lived experience
Together, they reinforce something important.
Knowledge about the value of the arts does not sit in one domain alone.
When diverse perspectives converge, they strengthen and deepen our collective understanding.
I expect many colleagues will recognise their own practice wisdom — and the lived experiences of the people they work with — reflected back in this research.
If the truly transformative nature of arts engagement lies in complexity and context, then questions about how we actually practice shift.
Implications for practice
This robust new research raises vitally important questions for our field.
If arts engagement works through interacting, co-occurring processes within context, then what are we actually designing that goes beyond activities, techniques or even sessions?
Let’s re-imagine creative therapies as creating conditions.
Spaces.
Encounters.
Relational fields.
So perhaps we might ask:
- Rather than refining techniques, how do we create the conditions in which these interacting processes can emerge?
- What supports the experience of safety alongside risk, so that growth becomes possible?
- How do we design for co-creation, rather than delivery?
- What becomes possible if we move beyond individualised, one-to-one models of care and consider how creative engagement can be woven into everyday life and community contexts?
- How might we cultivate rhythm, repetition and accessibility, so that people can experience the cumulative effects described in this research?
- And what happens when we take seriously the idea that creativity is not merely complementary, but a fundamental human capacity shaping how we sense, relate and create meaning?
This is a significant paper, and I suspect it will be highly influential.
Perhaps its greatest contribution goes beyond what it explains — to what it invites us to reimagine in how we create, hold, and participate in the conditions for human flourishing.
Accessing Creative Practice for Yourself
My daily, online Creative Flow Open Studio is one small example of a simple space designed with these complex ideas in mind.
It is a consistent, shared, online creative practice space — a regular rhythm where people come together, set an intention, and engage in their own creative process in the presence of others.
- No teaching.
- No critique.
- No pressure to share.
Just a held space for creative engagement to unfold.
You can find out more HERE.
Dr Carla van Laar is an independent artist, author, researcher, supervisor, and Creative and Experiential Therapist living and working on Boon Wurrung Country, in Inverloch, Australia. Her work bridges creative mental health, arts and health, and experiential therapies, positioning creativity as a vital public-health approach supporting wellbeing across individuals, communities, and systems. Creative-worldview underpins Dr Carla’s practice ecosystem through her offerings of Creative Flow Open Studio, Supervision Studio, Inverloch Creative Therapies, and Creative Mental Health Events.
For all inquiries please contact carla@carlavanlaar.com
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