Creative Lives’ new report 'Know Your Neighbourhood: Exploring how creativity can support social connection, reduce loneliness and inspire pride in place' has just been published.

The report celebrates over 60 creative projects across England, funded by Creative Lives from 2023-25, that increased volunteering and tackled loneliness.  

Our report echoes the robust external Know Your Neighbourhood (KYN) evaluation published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Arts Council England on 15 April 2026. It demonstrates that engaging in local creative activities, led by the community can improve wellbeing, increase social connection, and create volunteering opportunities. 

You can read the final report here

During the KYN project, we also observed that local creative projects:

• increased pride in place
• fostered social cohesion and inclusion
• promoted environmentally sustainable activity

The KYN fund invested up to £30 million (including £900,000 managed by Creative Lives), between January 2023 and March 2025 to widen participation in volunteering and tackle loneliness. In April 2025, the fund was extended to run until March 2026. In total, the KYN programme engaged 144,632 participants across its funding streams. 

Creative Lives distributed more than 60 grants to local creative groups, bringing communities together through creativity. Overall, the Creative Lives grants surpassed original targets by supporting the delivery of:

• 3,010 activities
• 561 events
• Engaging 1,995 volunteers and 26,000 participants

Research commissioned by DCMS shows that the arts, heritage, and cultural activities commissioned as part of KYN successfully achieved the following:

• reached a broad range of people at risk of loneliness
• enabled social connection, with 89% of participants agreeing that they had built social connections through the project
• built pride in place, enabling a sense of belonging
• built confidence amongst participants

We are delighted to see the results of the rigorous evaluation of the KYN fund, carried out by ERS Research & Consultancy, which found that: “well-targeted, localised interventions can successfully mobilise communities and improve wellbeing.” 

The ERS report, which focused on the strand of Know Your Neighbourhood co-ordinated by Arts Council England (including funding distributed by Creative Lives, Libraries Connected and Association of Independent Museums), also found that the activity funded via this programme improved wellbeing through:

• creating social connections
• developing new friendships
• developing or learning skills 

The evaluation report found that “consistent improvements were also reported for the outcome ‘pride in the local area’”. Individuals reported helping local people or improving their communities as being key reasons for engaging in these opportunities. 

Again, this echoes Creative Lives’ finding in our local place-based work - that people often take part in creative activities to give something back to their community.

We are delighted to have taken part in this important and complex programme of work, which has made a real difference to people's lives, with participants reporting that the activities were ‘life saving’. 

Creative Lives will continue to use the findings to advocate for further investment in local, creative interventions that are shaped by communities, to bring people together, improve local areas and increase wellbeing.

Please email [email protected] for more information.