Museums, art galleries and public health: evaluating health and wellbeing interventions

Museums and art galleries are increasingly offering public health-oriented programmes focused on health and wellbeing for people across the lifespan. Such programmes address a range of issues and problems including social isolation, equality and social justice, community empowerment, disability, physical and mental health, quality of life, memory and reminiscence and learning. Researching the impact and effectiveness of such programmes can be challenging for many museums and galleries due, in part, to the diverse range of epistemological and methodological approaches to research and evaluation that currently exist. This paper will explore some of these approaches by offering a culture and public health framework for museum and gallery involvement. The framework incorporates the diverse requirements of different stakeholders who consume an evaluation report and the seemingly dissimilar, if not bewildering, forms of evidence that an evaluation can produce. Pragmatic approaches to effective evaluation and data collection strategies will be discussed together with the potential value of partnerships with universities and health authorities.