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Why One Evening a Week Could Make a Difference

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Why One Evening a Week Could Make a Difference


Most weeks fill themselves.

Work runs late, plans get moved, the commute takes longer than expected, and before you know it another evening has disappeared into dinner, scrolling and getting ready to do it all again tomorrow.

But what happens when you deliberately keep one evening for something different?

Not for scrolling, catching up on emails or ticking another task off the list, but for moving, making, performing, learning or spending time with people who are interested in the same things you are.

Increasingly, research suggests that creative activity isn't simply an enjoyable addition to our lives. It can play a meaningful role in how we feel, connect with others and experience the world around us.

Creativity and wellbeing: what does the research tell us?


In 2019, the World Health Organisation published a major review examining the relationship between arts participation, health and wellbeing. Bringing together evidence from more than 3,000 studies, it found a substantial body of evidence supporting a role for the arts in promoting health and helping to prevent and manage ill health across different stages of life.

And "the arts" in this context is much broader than visiting a gallery or being able to paint.

It includes activities such as dance, music, singing, theatre, writing, photography and other forms of active creative participation.

Co-author of the WHO review and one of the world's leading researchers into the links between art and health, Professor Daisy Fancourt explores this relationship further in her 2026 book Art Cure. Her work brings together research from scientific fields including neuroscience, psychology, physiology and epidemiology to examine the different ways engaging with the arts can influence our health and wellbeing.

The interesting part isn't that we all need to become artists.

It's that doing something creative regularly may give us experiences that are increasingly difficult to find elsewhere in our lives.

Attention. Movement. Curiosity. Challenge. Expression. Shared purpose.

And sometimes, one evening is enough to begin.

What do you need more of in your week?


There is no single "best" creative activity for wellbeing.

The better question might be: what is currently missing from your week?

Perhaps you spend most of the day sitting at a desk and want an excuse to move. Maybe work occupies so much of your attention that you would like to concentrate on something completely unrelated. Perhaps you've been meaning to learn something for years. Or maybe you simply want to meet more people without the awkwardness of traditional networking or forced socialising.

Thinking about what you need can make choosing something much easier.



If you need more energy

Sometimes the best way to switch off isn't to stop doing things. It's to do something completely different. A dance class, acting exercise or improvisation session demands your attention in a way that everyday routines often don't. You're listening to music, responding to other people, remembering sequences, reacting in the moment or learning how your body moves. There's very little room left for thinking about tomorrow's inbox. For some people, that physical and mental change of pace is precisely what makes an evening class feel restorative.

If you need something that challenges you

There is something satisfying about being a beginner again. Adult life can become very focused on the things we're already expected to know how to do. Learning something newgives us permission to enter a room without having all the answers. You might learn your first guitar chords, begin constructing a fictional character, discover how to communicate with greater presence or finally understand something you've always been curious about. Progress doesn't need to be dramatic to feel rewarding. One chord becomes a song. A blank page becomes a paragraph. Something that felt unfamiliar three weeks ago begins to feel natural. Research into arts engagement considers cognitive, emotional and social pathways amongst the mechanisms through which creative activities may affect health and wellbeing. But you don't necessarily need to think about any of that while you're doing it. Sometimes it simply feels good to learn.

If you need space to create

Not everything we do has to be productive. That can be surprisingly difficult to remember. Much of everyday life is measured by outcomes: deadlines met, targets reached, messages answered, jobs completed. Creative practice works differently. You can take a photograph simply because something caught your attention. Experiment with watercolour without knowing exactly what the finished painting will look like. Start writing a song with a melody, a phrase or an idea and follow wherever it leads. There can still be technique, structure and plenty to learn. But alongside that is something equally important: room to experiment. You don't have to already think of yourself as creative, either. Creativity isn't something reserved for people who have been drawing since childhood or who already know how to play an instrument. It is something you can practise.

If you need more connection

Making friends as an adult can be strangely difficult. Classes offer an unusually natural solution because meeting people isn't the only reason you're there. You're rehearsing a scene. Learning choreography. Singing together. Trying to remember the same Salsa combination. Preparing for a performance. That shared activity takes some of the pressure away from socialising. Conversations happen around what you're already doing together, and familiarity develops week by week. The WHO's research review identified social connection as one of several important pathways through which engagement with the arts may support health and wellbeing. Group creative activities can be particularly powerful in this respect because they give people a reason to come together repeatedly around a shared interest.

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