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The purpose of this paper is to look at peer support in the context of broader communities.

It builds on the author’s experience working with the Mental Health Foundation of developing delivering and evaluating several self-management and peer support initiatives in a variety of settings with a range of different peer groups. It will consider what constitutes a peer and a community, and explore the notion of community solutions for community problems.

Peer support in community settings has the capacity to address social isolation, build skills and self-esteem and give individuals a better quality of life – it can also add value to whole communities and reframe the way entire groups are considered within them. It has the ability to be both more accessible and less stigmatising and thus reach more people. This also offers community based peer support as a contributor to preventing the deterioration of mental health and potentially reducing the impact of mental ill-health.

The author needs to think more in terms of whole community and get better at improving how the author measures and articulates this community benefit. This will allow us to make better decisions about how best to apply resources for long term whole community gain. Peer support and peer leadership needs to be at the heart of this process.

This paper places a familiar approach in a different setting placing peer support firmly outside services and within comunities.

The purpose of this paper is to relate the growing body of evidence about the impact of creative arts on the health and well-being of older people to the debate about active ageing, prevention and demographic change.

It draws on a range of researched examples in order to illustrate the impact of three different art forms – singing, dance and visual arts – on health and well-being.

The evidence exists in increasing volume and diversity that creative arts not only improve personal feelings of well-being but also key physiological measures. The arts are increasingly recognised as playing a major potential role in the delivery of health and social care interventions. Greater recognition and action are needed from policy makers, commissioners and care providers in health and social care that the arts are not a marginal and elitist avenue but a mainstream tool supporting older people to remain active, healthy and independent. Importantly, they represent a powerful source of motivation, agency and confidence.

It argues that creative arts should become an integral and more prominent part of ageing policy. The evidence exists in increasing volume and diversity that creative arts not only improve personal feelings of well-being but also key physiological measures. The arts are increasingly recognised as playing a major potential role in the delivery of health and social care interventions. Greater recognition and action are needed from policy makers, commissioners and care providers in health and social care that the arts are not a marginal and elitist avenue but a mainstream tool supporting older people to remain active, healthy and independent. Importantly, they represent a powerful source of motivation, agency and confidence.

An important research challenge remains, namely to plot cause (arts intervention) and effect (reduced demand on health and care services), if the creative arts are to occupy a central place in commissioning investment at a time of acute financial stringency in the public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore their experiences as singers in a community choir called Arrkula (a Yanyuwa word meaning “one voice”) based in the School of Education at the University of Queensland as performance of song, self, social justice and seeing beyond boundaries. Performing at “gigs” inside and outside the university, Arrkula has been singing together since 2011, and despite an environment replete with neo-liberal ideals of individualism, competitiveness and capitalist driven research agendas, at the centre of their song remains a yearning for social connection, equality and renewed consciousness.

The authors take an autoethnographic creative approach and bring performance of song together with their stories and interviews with choir members to link the “secret space” of the rehearsal with the “public space” of staged performances.

The authors’ aim is to think and perform the potential the voice and voices of Arrkula hold in terms of heightening senses of agency, provoking and empowering a pursuit of freedom and transforming lived worlds through song.

The value of this paper is the authors’ take up of Maxine Greene’s (2005, p. 38) question, “if we can link imagination to our sense of possibility and our ability to respond to other human beings, can we link it to the making of community as well?” to consider what singing for democracy and difference might mean individually and collectively in the current climate of higher education.

This paper aims to describe the development and evaluation of an innovative community singing initiative with mental health services users and supporters in East Kent, UK.

A network of seven singing groups was established between September 2009 and June 2010. The choirs met weekly in three terms with breaks for Christmas and Easter, and joined together for two public performances in February and June 2010. In total, 137 participants were involved in the evaluation processes over this period. Of these, 42 provided complete data on the CORE questionnaire, a widely used clinical measure of mental distress, at baseline and eight months later.

Clinically significant improvements were observed in response to the CORE. These changes, together with qualitative feedback from participants, demonstrate that group singing can have substantial benefits in aiding the recovery of people with a history of serious and enduring mental health problems. A limited body of research has also shown that singing can be helpful for people with existing mental and physical health problems.

The research finds marked improvements in mental wellbeing on a clinically validated measure for people with a range of enduring mental health issues participating in a network of small choirs. Qualitative evidence indicates that group singing can offer a wide range of emotional and social benefits for mental health service users.

The aim of this study is to explore the benefits of choral singing for mental wellbeing and health as perceived by a cross‐national sample of amateur choral singers.

Data consisted of written responses to open‐ended questions. These were derived from 169 participants selected from a larger dataset reporting high and low levels of emotional wellbeing on the WHOQOL‐BREF questionnaire. A majority of participants were female and aged over 50. A thematic analysis was followed by a content analysis and Pearson chi square analyses. Comparisons were made between different ages, genders and nationalities and participants with high and low reported emotional wellbeing.

The analysis revealed multiple themes covering perceived benefits in social, emotional, physical, and cognitive domains. There were no significant differences in frequency of themes across any of the participant sociodemographic and wellbeing categories. The results indicate that benefits of singing may be experienced similarly irrespective of age, gender, nationality or wellbeing status.

Implications for further research include future use of validated instruments to measure outcomes and research into the benefits of singing in other cultures. The results of this study suggest that choral singing could be used to promote mental health and treat mental illness.

This study examines a cross‐national sample which is larger than previous studies in this area. These findings contribute to understanding of the complex and interacting factors which might contribute to wellbeing and health, as well as specific benefits of singing.