Back in May, a panel at Science Gallery London spent an evening arguing over a single question: should creativity be promoted as a health behaviour, in the same way the NHS promotes exercise or quitting smoking, and if so, how do you actually get the public to do it? Dr Guddi Singh, Dr Phil Hammond and Dr Simon Opher MP debated it from the stage as part of Creativity and Wellbeing Week, chaired by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, in an event held in honour of the late creative health campaigner Lord Howarth of Newport. It was a good panel, with serious people. It was also, on its own, just a conversation.
Four months on, that conversation has an answer. The National Centre for Creative Health, which provides the secretariat for the parliamentary group Lord Howarth once chaired, has begun paying for dedicated Creative Health Lead posts inside NHS systems, funded by Arts Council England and the Baring Foundation.
The first six health and care systems were announced in March: Berkshire West, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, North East London, South East London, Walsall Together, and West Yorkshire, forming the first cohort of what is expected to grow to approximately 25 to 30 Creative Health Lead roles across England over the next two years.
Two of those six systems sit inside London. The North East London post has already been advertised, hosted by NELFT NHS Foundation Trust and working across the North East London Integrated Care Board and the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Waltham Forest, Havering and Tower Hamlets.
Working with primary stakeholders NEL Integrated Care Board, the London boroughs, and North East London Foundation Trust, the Creative Health Lead will build on the foundations of the Creative Health Associates pilot to drive coordinated, system-wide change, as part of the National Centre for Creative Health’s Creative Health Leads Programme, supported by Arts Council England and The Baring Foundation.
The South East London post sits within the South London Listens team.
Building on two years of local work, the role is intended to help turn creative health from a collection of successful projects into a joined-up, long-term approach, bringing together the NHS, councils, community groups, and arts and heritage organisations to make creativity part of everyday health support, from mental health and social prescribing to neighbourhood-based prevention.
That question was not new in May. Social prescribing, the NHS mechanism that lets a GP refer a patient to a museum or a choir instead of, or alongside, a clinical treatment, already exists across London in exactly this way. What is new is the shape of the answer: not another pilot scheme or another evening of expert testimony, but a paid, permanent-feeling job title inside two of London’s actual NHS bureaucracies, with a named ICB, named boroughs and a named host trust attached to it. Dr Paul Gilluley, Chief Medical Officer for NHS North East London, put it plainly when the six systems were announced: the aim is to build on the work already done to embed creative health across communities and develop a long-term approach that delivers tangible benefits for the population.
The scale of ambition is not small. NCCH expects to fund up to 25 to 30 of these posts nationally within three years, and the application window for the next round of systems is open now, closing on 18 September 2026, with expressions of interest welcomed at any time. Whether that target is met, and whether a job title changes anything for a patient in Tower Hamlets or Lewisham waiting for a GP appointment, is the open question the May panel could only speculate about. It is no longer speculation whether the NHS is willing to pay for an answer. It is doing so, in two London boroughs, right now.
NCCH’s next application round closes 18 September 2026. EyeOnLondon will be watching whether North East and South East London’s posts actually get filled, or stay vacancies.
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