It can make us healthier, happier and live longer. Engaging in culture should be encouraged like good diet and exercise

The second Friday in January has been dubbed “Quitter’s Day”, when we are most likely to give up our new year resolutions. Instead of denying ourselves pleasures, suggests a new batch of books, a more successful route may be adding to them – nourishing our minds and souls by making creativity as much a daily habit as eating vegetables and exercising. Rather than the familiar exhortations to stop drinking, diet, take up yoga or running, there is an overwhelming body of evidence to suggest that joining a choir, going to an art gallery or learning to dance should be added to the new year list.

Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt, professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, brings together numerous research projects confirming what we have always suspected – art is good for us. It helps us enjoy happier, healthier and longer lives. One study found that people who engaged regularly with the arts had a 31% lower risk of dying at any point during the follow-up period, even when confounding socioeconomic, demographic and health factors were taken into account. Studies also show that visiting museums and attending live music events can make people physiologically younger, and a monthly cultural activity almost halves our chances of depression. As Fancourt argues, if a drug boasted such benefits governments would be pouring billions into it. Instead, funding has been slashed across the culture sector and arts education has been devalued and eroded in the UK.

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Engaging in creativity can reduce depression, improve immunity and delay ageing – all while you’re having fun

For some reason, we have collectively agreed that new year is the time to reinvent ourselves. The problem, for many people, is that we’ve tried all the usual health kicks – running, yoga, meditation, the latest diets – even if we haven’t really enjoyed them, in a bid to improve our minds and bodies. But have any of us given as much thought to creativity? Allow me to suggest that this year be a time to embrace the arts.

Ever since our Paleolithic ancestors began painting caves, carving figurines, dancing and singing, engaging in the arts has been interwoven with health and healing. Look through the early writings of every major medical tradition around the world and you find the arts. What is much newer – and rapidly accelerating over the past two decades – is a blossoming scientific evidence-base identifying and quantifying exactly what the health benefits of the arts are.