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Professor Robyn Clark - Flinders University Photo: Supplied
A small farming town in South Australia has been on a mission to show art can improve health and well-being.
Pinnaroo, a town in the region of Murray Mallee, was named the state’s Agricultural Town of the Year in 2020 but in 2021 residents wanted to explore another skillset - art.
In an Australian-first - the Pinnaroo community reached out to researchers at Flinders University to measure the health impacts from participating in arts and culture. The community-led approach is both unique and impressive.
Speaking to Culture 101’s Perlina Lau, senior clinician and researcher at Flinders University, Professor Robyn Clark, says the Pinnaroo Project study had several objectives.
“We wanted to measure the participation, the experience and overall health of the community.”
The study considered those who engaged in the arts and those who didn’t.
“We wanted to look at the direct impact on those who created art - so how their health changed compared to those who didn’t.”
The economic impact was another consideration, with the hope to develop a model which could be adopted by other rural towns across Australia, and potentially worldwide.
The study visited sports clubs, libraries, bingo clubs, supermarkets and, for three years, it tracked the health of 182 residents from the ages of 8 to 98 years old. A considerable proportion for a town with a population of somewhere between 700 and 1200 people.
One-third of the town indicated they had mild to severe depression - a significant proportion.
According to a 2020-2021 Australian Bureau of Statistics survey, almost 43 percent of Australians have experienced mental illness at some point in their life. Anxiety was shown to be the most common mental disorder.
This community of Pinnaroo has very low access to healthcare services. It has one employed GP, a pharmacy that’s only open for half of the week, and a nurse practitioner who works part-time in the community.
“In the context of a lack of services they decided to look at alternative ways to stay healthy - without pills and doctors,” explains Professor Clark.
It was the community that decided mental health would be the main focus and the most important measure for the study.
Workshops flooded the town and were led by professional artists and experts coming from near and far. They included lantern making, leather work, pottery, weaving, podcasts and performances. The main sources of communication were a Facebook group, emails, and sandwich boards.
After almost five years, including the preparation for the study, the results are in and there’s cause for celebration.
“We saw lower adult depression, higher physical activity in over 65s, statistically less alcohol drinking days, less smoking and less high blood pressure.
“The Pinnaroo children are eating more healthily and are higher than the national average for fruit and vegetables.”
From 2022 to 2023, the percentage of moderate to severe depression in the Pinnaroo Project art group went from 19 percent to 9 percent. A 10 percent decrease. The change in the no-art group was only a 4 percent decrease.
The number of participants who reported having no depression from 2021 to 2023 improved each year from 66.9 percent to 76.4 percent.
Over the three years, the number of hours the participants were engaged in the arts tripled.
“If you’ve tripled the amount of time people are engaged with creative activity, that’s going to have some effect on a community’s culture.”
Those involved in arts rated their quality of life higher than those who were not involved.
But there’s also the economic impact.
For every dollar that was invested in the project, the return to the community was $2.30. This was achieved by skills development - training project managers, website developers and workshop managers.
It’s hoped the study will be published in a high-level scientific journal and next steps will be looking at the impact of the project and refining the model.
There are discussions of a potential service where the researchers from the university could visit different towns to achieve a similar study.
Professor Clark’s team are delighted by the results.
“This community has turned itself around. It’s drinking less, smoking less, eating healthily, and becoming more active. That’s as good as you could ask for, for an arts and health project.
“I think it’s a unique reflection of the strength and resilience of rural people and I think it could be repeated anywhere in Australia, New Zealand or the world.”