The challenge
Globally, there are a host of challenges related to health, not least increasing demands on mental health services and ageing populations. Innovations for preventing and treating illness, as well as maintaining optimal levels of wellbeing, are therefore under constant development. Music, as a readily available and cost effective psychosocial intervention, has emerged as a promising tool in healthcare, but the field requires more nuanced evidence, more interdisciplinary collaboration, and more attention on issues related to inclusion and access.
Our approach
In our research, we employ a wide range of scientific and musical approaches to understand the short- and long-term impacts of engaging with music and the arts. Responding to the complexity of health behaviours and attitudes, we examine psychological and physiological responses to music such as changes in states or symptoms, lived experiences, perceptions, and access to music and health, and population-level links between arts engagement and health. Our findings have provided evidence for music’s potential to support mental health across groups including older adults, mental health service users and carers, people affected by cancer, women experiencing symptoms of postnatal depression, and urban residents in the Global South. Work at a population level has demonstrated the central role of the arts in social connectedness, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as demonstrating links between cultural engagement and social and mental health outcomes. Further enquiry has shed light on mechanisms of action, including identifying perceived and physiological pathways between music and mental wellbeing, as well as barriers to what we term ‘musical care’ – i.e. the roles of music in supporting any aspect of people’s developmental or health needs.
This research underpins knowledge exchange initiatives currently running in the United Kingdom and internationally. For example, our research on the role of group singing to support recovery from postnatal depression has been implemented in a number of national and international practice and support initiatives. We lead two interdisciplinary networks designed to maximise research, practice, and knowledge exchange within the field: the Musical Care International Network, bringing together practitioners and researchers to explore examples of musical care from different disciplinary and cultural perspectives, and the Music and Parental Wellbeing Research Network, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to explore the role of music in supporting parental wellbeing. The CPS’s close strategic partnerships with key arts and health organisations ensure that our research findings continue to make maximum impact, as well as directly affecting an expanding pool of beneficiaries. One example of our work is the co-development of UK-focused policy recommendations for musical care during the beginning of life, launched in 2024.
In our teaching, we embed content on music, health, and wellbeing across the Royal College of Music’s undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, including the RCM’s MSc in Performance Science and PhD in Performance Science.