The Order of Art.

There’s a feeling one gets when they immerse themselves in the characters of a film, laughing or crying with them as the story progresses. There’s a feeling one gets when they hear the lyrics of their favourite song and can’t help but move to the rhythm or sing along. There’s a feeling one gets when they put a brush to paper, or come across a painting that intrigues them. There’s a feeling one gets when they witness a creation—or create something for others to witness.

There is something about the ability of art to transport us, comfort us, and elicit feelings that may not always be easy to explain.

While there is little debate about the role art can play in our overall wellbeing and morale, there is greater discussion—and perhaps hesitation—around its place within healthcare itself.

In her book Art Cure, Daisy Fancourt, Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London, explores precisely this question. Her argument goes beyond the idea that art simply makes us happier. She examines the neurological, physiological and social mechanisms through which engaging with art may affect our health.

She begins with the story of a man whose life changed dramatically following a stroke. He lost much of his independence and routine and subsequently struggled with depression and pain. Alongside conventional medical treatment, his doctor prescribed something unexpected: an art class.

Initially skeptical, he began attending. Eventually, he was volunteering to do more than was required. His doctors observed improvements not only in his mood, but also in measures including his blood pressure and pain. The classes became, in his telling, instrumental in “saving his life.”

It raises an interesting question: if art can play a meaningful role in recovery and wellbeing, why does it still sit so far outside the way we think about care?

What happens when we experience art?

One way of understanding the relationship between art and health is through what Fancourt calls the “active ingredients” of art.

Rather than treating an artistic experience as something abstract or impossible to measure, she breaks it down into its component parts. Singing to a premature baby in intensive care, for example, can involve auditory stimulation, human connection, stress reduction and the buffering of surrounding hospital noise. These, in turn, can activate different biological and psychological mechanisms.

The art itself may be difficult to quantify, but aspects of what it does to us are not.

Listening to music, watching a film, dancing, painting or participating in theatre can engage us cognitively, emotionally, physically and socially. Researchers have explored how these experiences may influence stress, cognition, emotional processing, social connection and our sense of agency.

These dimensions become particularly important during illness, which can bring isolation, anxiety, pain, loss of identity and a profound loss of control.

Perhaps, then, the question is not whether art can cure disease, but whether it can affect the experience and, in some cases, the outcomes of being unwell.

What does the research show?

In 2019, the World Health Organization published one of the most comprehensive examinations of arts and health to date. Led by Daisy Fancourt and Saoirse Finn, the review drew on evidence from more than 3,000 studies and identified potential roles for the arts across health promotion, prevention, and the management and treatment of illness.

The findings span remarkably different forms of art and areas of health—from music and visual art to dance, theatre and cultural engagement.

Films offer one interesting example. In a study conducted by researchers at University College London with Vue Entertainment, biometric devices were used to monitor people watching a film in a cinema. Participants' heart rates rose and fell with the emotional intensity of the story, and researchers also observed synchronisation in audience members' heart rates during parts of the film.

It does not mean that going to the cinema should be prescribed in place of exercise or medicine. What it does demonstrate is something more fundamental: experiencing art is not necessarily passive. Our brains, bodies and relationships with the people around us respond to what we see, hear and feel.

Art as part of care

None of this suggests that art should replace medicine. It shouldn't.

Instead, it raises a broader question about how we define care.

If an intervention does not cure a disease, but reduces someone's distress, helps them manage pain, encourages social connection or restores a sense of agency, should it still have a place within healthcare?

Some health systems are already experimenting with this idea through approaches such as social prescribing, where patients may be connected to community activities—including arts and cultural programmes—alongside conventional care.

There are also important limitations. Arts interventions vary enormously, studies can be small, and outcomes such as wellbeing can be difficult to measure. It can also be difficult to separate the effect of the art itself from the effects of social interaction, attention or simply leaving the house.

These questions do not weaken the case for studying art and health. They make rigorous research more important.

And what about India?

This is perhaps the question that interests us most.

India has extraordinary artistic and cultural traditions. Music, dance, theatre, storytelling, craft and visual art have been embedded within communities for centuries. At the same time, our healthcare system faces enormous challenges of access, affordability and capacity.

So what role, if any, could art realistically play within it?

Emerging research in India is beginning to explore the relationship between art and health. A 2025 feasibility study involving children aged 10 to 16 in childcare centres in Kerala found improvements in emotional and behavioural outcomes, as well as self-esteem, following a structured 10-week art therapy programme. Research with children in childcare centres in Goa has similarly explored art therapy as a means of supporting mental health, emotional regulation and resilience. While these studies are small, their findings offer promising early evidence and point to the need for larger, more rigorous research in India.

Arts-based programmes already exist across India. What remains less clear is how widely their outcomes are being measured, and where rigorous evidence exists around whether and how they work.

From appreciation to evidence

Perhaps there are two separate ideas that we should be careful not to confuse.

Art does not need to improve someone's blood pressure, reduce their pain or change a clinical outcome to have value. Art has value in and of itself. But when we deliberately introduce it into healthcare, it is reasonable to ask a different set of questions: What works? For whom? Under what circumstances? And how do we know?

At the Rani Fund, these questions have made us interested in exploring the intersection of art, health and evidence in India—not by assuming that art is medicine, but by understanding where it might meaningfully complement care, and where stronger evidence is still needed.

Stephen Sondheim described art as an attempt to bring order out of chaos. Illness often produces precisely the opposite: uncertainty, disruption and a loss of control.

Perhaps the question, then, is not whether a painting can replace a prescription or a film can cure an illness. It is whether healthcare can make room for the parts of being human that medicine alone was never designed to treat—and whether art has a role to play within that space.