The Pharmacy of Contemplative Arts is an ongoing practice-led investigation into the role of contemplative arts practices in shaping metacognition, affective experience, and learning among students across arts and humanities disciplines in higher education.

Drawing on the philosophy of social prescribing, the project explores contemplative arts practices not simply as a wellbeing service, but as objects of scholarly inquiry.  It examines how non-biomedical interventions intersect with creativity, pedagogy, and student subjectivity within contemporary university contexts. 

Existing research suggests that student wellbeing is closely associated with academic achievement, interpersonal relationships, and mental and physical health. Studies also indicate that university students may experience significant challenges to their wellbeing even alongside strong academic performance.

Prior literature identifies a range of pressures shaping this context, including academic stress, social isolation, stigma surrounding mental health and help-seeking, employment-related anxieties, reliance on maladaptive coping strategies, and the longer-term psychological effects of the global pandemic. While these dynamics are well documented, less is known about how contemplative arts practices function pedagogically and affectively within higher education environments.

Students studying arts and humanities disciplines navigate the demands of complex creative and intellectual work in a volatile global context, alongside social, cultural, and pedagogical pressures.  Within this context, the project examines how contemplative arts practices might help students encounter and work with affective and psychological barriers such as perfectionism, vulnerability, disappointment, shame, and attachment, and how these dynamics intersect with learning, metacognition, wellbeing, and creativity.

The investigation develops and studies a social prescribing programme of multimodal contemplative arts practices, including workshops, courses, and half-day retreats.  These bring together contemplative arts, meditation and collective reflection, creating spaces in which students can explore the relationship between inner experience, creative practice and learning.  Inspired in part by William Sieghart's The Poetry Pharmacy series (2017; 2019; 2023), the programme also draws upon the Five Ways to Wellbeing framework (New Economics Foundation, 2008).

The research focus lies not simply in evaluating wellbeing outcomes, but in understanding how such practices are interpreted and experienced within higher education contexts. It therefore foregrounds the relationship between contemplative practice, creative pedagogy, and affective experience.

The research addresses three interconnected areas of inquiry:

1. Creative Practice: How contemplative arts practices reshape affective and cognitive barriers to creativity, self-expression, self-understanding, and insight.

2. Pedagogy and Learning: How contemplative approaches influence student engagement and participation across arts and humanities disciplines in higher education.

3. Social Connection and Wellbeing: How informal, arts-based contemplative settings shape experiences of connection and wellbeing among students.

By treating contemplative arts practices as objects of scholarly inquiry rather than solely as wellbeing or educational interventions, the project seeks to advance interdisciplinary understanding of the relationships between contemplation, creativity and learning, while offering a novel conceptual contribution to debates around creativity, pedagogy, and social prescribing in higher education.

References

Aked, J., Marks, N., Cordon, C., & Thompson, S. (2008). Five Ways to Wellbeing. New Economics Foundation.

Sieghart, W. (2017). The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul. London: Particular Books.

Sieghart, W. (2019). The Poetry Pharmacy Returns: More Prescriptions for Courage, Healing and Hope. London: Particular Books.

Sieghart, W. (2023). The Poetry Pharmacy Forever: New Prescriptions to Soothe, Revive and Inspire. London: Particular Books.