The Arts for Health Archive aims to preserve and enable access by researchers and other interested parties to a unique collection of key documents, artifacts, photographic and digital media and ephemera that record the pioneering years of arts and health as this movement radiated worldwide from Manchester from the 1970s

After rescue from imminent decay in the basement of an abandoned building in Manchester's Victoria Park, the Arts for Health Archive is now established in its new home in the Righton Building at the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).

The Archive - with its volunteer staff of Dr Langley Brown and Peter Senior - is already being interrogated and referenced by a growing number of undergraduate and postgraduate research projects, from within MMU as well as from other universities including Leeds, Oxford, and Murcia in Spain.

The Archive documents how today's widespread engagement of the arts/health domain began in and expanded from Manchester from the 1970s, and extends to the period around the publication of the Invest to Save findings in 2007.

By documenting the key pioneering stages of a journey that has made a significant contribution to international developments in this field, the Arts for Health Archive offers researchers, students and arts/health practitioners a unique resource for understanding the origins, philosophies, politics, processes and milestones of what has emerged as a movement for significant cultural change in its promotion of the long-neglected relationship between human creativity and well-being.

Since Langley began this piece of work, we are pleased to announce that the Wellcome Trust have taken the archive and have professionally catalogued and linked it to other collections and online resources, so that researchers - including those arts/health practitioners curious to understand the origins of their work - are able to explore a widening range of research avenues.

Most of the archives have been catalogued and are now online

The Witness Seminar

Notes and documentation relating to the Art for Health Witness Seminar which took place at Wellcome Trust on 14 June 2016. Contains details of the participants list, participants' statements, programme, invitation, AV recording and transcript.

The Witness Seminar sought to bring together people who had made key contributions to arts in health policy, practice and research since the 1970s and to provide a space for discussion and debate. All participants were invited to contribute a short text for inclusion in the library's collection summarising their perspectives on the role of arts and health practice. The event was chaired by The Rt Hon. the Lord Howarth of Newport and was structured around presentations from ten key witnesses: Professor Gary Ansdell; Dr Langley Brown; Alison Clough; Rev Lara Dose; Gina Levete; Professor Jane Macnaughton; Professor John Wyn Owen; Clive Parkinson; Professor Fiona Sampson and Peter Senior.

• wellcomelibrary.org/item/b29707882