Contributions to more engaged ageing: the arts, health and wellbeing mix

In 1988 Hospital Arts became Arts for Health and was formally integrated into Manchester Metro-politan University where it continues doing innovative work under the directorship of Clive Parkinson. Peter Senior and the UK gave birth to what is now known as the arts and health field, which has truly become international in scope. While it is beyond the capacity of this article to present a history of UK arts and health achievements and contributions (see Clift et al., 2009; Royal Society for Public Health, 2013), the focus will be to discuss some of the impediments to arts and health research and to also look at some of the key practice ingredi-ents, particularly those that are oriented toward older people, with the more recent addition of wellbeing being added into the mix.