Policy Reflections: How can mindfulness help promote the mental well-being resilience of artists and designers?

The arts and culture sector cultivates improved mental health and wellbeing among Canadians.¹ Art galleries, for example, attract public audiences that reflect and contemplate the multiple angles of an artistic work or cultural artifact, providing an opportunity for an informal mindful practice. However, many artists themselves confront significant systems challenges that impact their mental wellbeing. The paradigm for the social determinants of health² is helpful for making such connections. In particular, precarious employment, low income and social isolation can be distressing and compound stress, which may contribute to reduced mental wellbeing among creatives.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as ‘a state of wellbeing in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and is able to contribute to his or her community’.³ To mitigate risk factors for reduced mental health, the Canadian Mental Health Association stipulates that promoting good mental health includes efforts at both the individual-level and community-levels.⁴ CMHA also advocates for intersectoral initiatives at the system-level; these could include advancing policy that “mitigates the deleterious effects of adverse social determinants of health.”⁵ For this policy reflection blog post, we will review some of the adverse mental wellbeing risk factors to which artists and designers may be vulnerable. The blog post will also assess how practicing mindfulness may be a useful individual-level and community-level tool to facilitate future resiliency.

Artist and designer health and wellbeing  

Research suggests that artists and designers suffer poor mental health outcomes. For example, a 40-year prospective study in Sweden found that bipolar disorder was more associated with creative professions than other professions6. Further, in their 2022 report, Visual Arts Nova Scotia noted that 74% of artist respondents in Nova Scotia have required mental health supports or services, during their career, and 70% stated that their reduced mental wellbeing negatively impacted their work as an artist.⁷ Moreover, the following indicators have been highlighted as top stressors artists face: financial insecurity (73% reported), burnout (60% reported), inability to live up to artistic potential (59% reported), lack of self-confidence (53% reported), and lack of professional opportunity (52% reported).⁸

Other data suggests this mental health disparity is also clear during post-secondary education, as students in art and design faculties are more susceptible to adverse mental wellbeing. In their 2018 data brief, the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design reported that while 42% of non-art and design students reported positive mental health, only 25% of art and design students reported positive mental health.⁹

1. There is significant evidence linking job insecurity with reduced mental wellbeing.¹⁰ Risk factors associated with the social determinants of health, like precarity, need to be understood holistically for systems to change.11 Often, artists and designers' mental wellbeing outcomes are negatively affected by the arts business, which is characterized by a highly competitive career prospects, often compounding financial insecurity and anxiety.¹² Some creatives also hold secondary jobs in precarious labour markets. The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, highlighted these social determinants of health risk factors, primarily because mental wellbeing among artists decreased alongside reduced creative work opportunities.^{13 14}

2. Research has also shown that low income is a primary risk factor for lower mental wellbeing; research linking one's earnings to social determinants of health is particularly revealing. The Toronto Arts Council reported that in 2016 Canadian artists had a median salary of around $24,300, which is significantly lower than the Canadian worker average.15 This income precarity is distressing and can have a significant influence on the emotional and physical well-being of artists and designers. Moreover, income precarity disproportionately affects vulnerable and marginalized communities including people of colour, Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ2+, refugees and immigrants, people with disabilities.¹⁶

The Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) also highlighted that in comparison to non-art students more than one-quarter of art and design students spend at least 20 additional hours completing coursework outside of class each week.²¹ This is important because art and design students have unique pressures, like studio work and critiques, that can exacerbate and compound more traditional studying pressures and stress.²² It is therefore important to provide emerging artists and all students with mental wellbeing supports that they can embed across their day-to-day lives as well as across their future career paths.

Supporting artists and creatives with mental wellbeing tools   

Mindfulness is one tool that can be leveraged to support individual wellbeing and increase resiliency. Mindfulness can be defined as the state of being mindful of one's environment, emotions and surroundings, leading to a more positive reaction to stressful events.²³ The practice of mindfulness can be executed in several ways, from formally establishing dedicated time and space to informally implementing it into daily activities.²⁴

1. Boosting Creativity and Productivity: Mindfulness can enhance creativity by encouraging individuals to generate new ideas and innovations.25 Mindfulness encourages openness to new perspectives, which can lead to unconventional and creative solutions to challenges.26 Through this, artists and designers may be able to unlock their creative potential, which can be useful for their creative work.

2.Reducing Stress: Practicing mindfulness regularly has been shown to reduce stress levels significantly.²⁷ Research shows that mindfulness training that is conducted in-person or online drastically reduces self-reported stress.28 Mindfulness exercises help people to cultivate self-control and accept challenges, particularly valuable for artists and designers who are often under pressure to meet deadlines and produce high-quality work for the arts market or for patrons. This can help them identify and manage stress thereby fostering a more productive and positive work environment by practicing mindfulness.

The Mindful Campus Initiative’s National Community of Practice also shares and mobilizes research, evidence and knowledge across art and design universities, in this area.³² Early program evaluation evidence shows there has been a positive impact on art and design students at OCAD U. This evidence will inform and improve the prototype before its scaled up to other collaborating post-secondary education partners, nationally. Initial findings also suggest the program positively impacted participants’ mental wellbeing and resilience. This is an important insight, as prior to the Mindful Campus Initiative launched, a population-level student mental wellbeing survey was conducted at OCAD U and showed a clear need for programming to support and enhance students’ mental wellbeing.

For art and design students, the Mindful Campus Initiative strives to create a pan-Canadian, organizational-level response that supports emerging creatives in accessing adaptable mental health support early on in their careers. Community-based mindfulness training, like the Mindful Campus Initiative, has the potential to reframe mental health and wellbeing in the arts.

Mindfulness is only one mental wellbeing tool to support and help artists and designers cope with precarity and the social determinants of health; it does not address systemic problems. A multi-layered and, even intersectoral, approach is required to fully improve and bolster creatives mental wellbeing.

Robust policy change is needed to address the systemic struggles within the arts ecosystem, particularly prevalent among artists and designers who navigate precarious labour, the unregulated gig economy, housing and studio unaffordability and the rising cost of living. In the meantime, mindfulness is a proven aid that may support creatives’ positive mental wellbeing.