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11. Interim conclusion and recommendations In its first year, Inspiring Futures: Volunteering for Wellbeing (if) is achieving dramatic improvements in participants' state of mental and emotional wellbeing, across a diverse range of abilities and challenging personal circumstances. Further outcomes for many participants are emerging, around continued volunteering, entering further education, employability and gaining work, as well as positive attitudinal change towards opportunities for socialising and project participation in heritage. This project is preventing and breaking vicious cycles of low self-belief, isolation, exclusion, demotivation, depression and rejection for many participants. Heritage and arts venues can be sustainable key partners in generating improved wellbeing and life satisfaction for people. DCMS' analysis for Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing impacts of sport and culture, estimates that culture/arts engagement can bring about life satisfaction improvements worth £1,084 per person per year. English Heritage estimates £1,646 as the wellbeing value of heritage engagement or visiting historic sites through the year. This does seem a broad range, and depends on the methodology of valuation. However, there is some similarity with this report's analysis of wellbeing improvement achieved so far through heritage volunteering, which estimates the value of volunteering for wellbeing to be in the range of £1,130, up to around £1,500 if bringing forward the value of forecasted future impacts i.e. some outcomes have longer benefit periods. Improving the scale of change in outcomes will increase this value. EH and HLF have also commissioned studies and evaluations demonstrating that individuals gain through engagement with heritage, particularly from enjoyment, a sense of fulfillment, and enrichment, the development of new skills and improved physical and mental health. Wellbeing is an overarching policy objective further set out by the Parliamentary paper, Wellbeing in Four Policy areas (2014), which combines economic and non-economic aims. Through this document policy makers recognise that experiencing and participating in arts and culture has demonstrable positive impacts on wellbeing, and it is recommended that links between the arts and culture and health, central government (DCMS, the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government) should work with relevant arts agencies to join up better, and maximise the wellbeing benefit from available budgets. Local authorities should also consider how cultural commissioning might contribute to priorities identified in their Health and Wellbeing Strategies. This challenge must be at the forefront for local authorities who are now also tasked with responsibilities under The Health and Social Care Act 2012, for improving the health and wellbeing of their local populations. if is achieving this through encompassing its core values throughout its delivery and also in its process of evaluation and reflection, in terms of: ◦ Being highly collaborative, co-operative, consultative ◦ Being aspirational, ambitious, innovative and committed to reflective learning ◦
Aiming to generate a sense of fairness, transparency and equality
Key success factors of this life-changing project include:
Fostering a sense of connection, enrichment and contribution to and from other people and their stories, which appears to be a key differentiator of heritage volunteering. Participants develop a strong connectedness to events and human experience across time. This is enhancing levels of selfawareness, belonging, imagination and ability to narrate and relate better to others, and thus improve social relationships, as well as mental and emotional capital. Stimulating training components unlocking participants' creative and communicative capabilities of storytelling, bringing objects to life and inspiring visitors' imaginations, thus significantly enhancing visitor experience and collection interpretation