Drawing & Painting : The Wellbeing Case

Why nurturing, confidence-building art classes matter for mental and physical health in Scotland

We started The Little Art School Charity because we’d seen, first-hand, what happens when someone who thinks they “can’t draw” picks up a pencil in a room where nobody is judging them. Something shifts. Not just in the work on the page — in the person holding the pencil. That belief, rooted in experience, is now backed by a substantial and growing body of research. This report brings that evidence together.

What follows draws on peer-reviewed studies, a landmark World Health Organisation review, and official Scottish Government data to make the case for what we do and why it matters — not as a clinical intervention, but as something just as necessary; because making art is genuinely good for you.

The Context: Scotland Right Now

The numbers coming out of Scotland’s mental health surveys make for uncomfortable reading. More than one in three people in Scotland will be affected by a mental health problem this year. That is not a projection or a worst-case figure — it is the consistent finding of the Scottish Government’s own data. Depression and anxiety are the most common conditions, and they are rising.

The Scottish Health Survey 2024 — the gold-standard annual measure of population health in Scotland — found that 22% of adults, more than one in five, showed signs of a possible psychiatric disorder. That figure has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Average adult mental wellbeing scores in 2024 remain lower than every single year on record between 2008 and 2019. And the inequality is stark: adults living in Scotland’s most deprived communities are nearly twice as likely to be affected as those in the least deprived areas (31% versus 17%).

GP consultations in Scotland relates to a mental health issue. Mental health referrals rose 22% in a single year — and the NHS cannot keep pace.

Scottish Government statistics; Public Health Scotland, 2024

Scotland has a growing loneliness problem that cuts across every age group. One in five adults experienced loneliness in the past week, according to the Scottish Household Survey 2024 — with the sharpest rates among young adults (23%) and those over 75 (25%). Meanwhile, mental health funding has been cut. NHS waiting times remain long. A referral for talking therapy in many parts of Scotland means months of waiting — months during which people are managing alone. It is in that gap that organisations like ours do some of their most important work.

What the Research Actually Shows

1. Making Art Measurably Reduces Stress

In 2016, researchers at Drexel University in the United States published a study that has since become a cornerstone of the evidence base for community arts and wellbeing. They recruited 39 adults, gave them 45 minutes with some basic art materials — markers, clay, collage — and measured their cortisol levels before and after. Cortisol is the body’s primary stress hormone. When it drops, so does the physical experience of stress.

of participants showed measurably reduced cortisol levels after just 45 minutes of making art — regardless of whether they’d ever made art before.

Kaimal, Ray & Muniz, Art Therapy journal, 2016 — Drexel University, peer-reviewed

What made the finding particularly striking — and particularly relevant to our work — was that prior experience made no difference at all. Beginners responded exactly as well as people who had been making art for years. As lead researcher Dr Girija Kaimal put it: “Everyone is creative and can be expressive in the visual arts when working in a supportive setting.” That sentence could have been written as a description of what the Little Art School Charity tries to be.

2. Painting Specifically Reduces Anxiety

A more recent pre-registered study went further. The National Institutes of Health (2024) found that painting does not just reduce anxiety in the general sense of being a pleasant distraction. It selectively and measurably reduces anxiety in ways that other activities do not. The mechanism is in the creative engagement itself.

That figure — 3,000 studies — comes from the most comprehensive review of arts and health evidence ever conducted: a 2019 scoping review commissioned by the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Its conclusion was unambiguous: engagement with the arts supports the prevention of ill health, the promotion of wellbeing, and the management of illness across every stage of life. The WHO itself has since described arts activities as “low-risk, highly cost-effective, integrated and holistic treatment options for complex health challenges” (The Lancet Public Health, 2023). These are not tentative findings. They are the settled view of the world’s leading health authorities.

3. It Builds Self-Esteem — Which is Central to Everything

This is where the research speaks most directly to our mission. Self-esteem is not a soft or supplementary concern — it is, as child development researcher Dorothy Briggs argued, “the mainspring that slates every child for success or failure as a human being.” And the evidence that making art builds it is solid.

Research from University College London (2025) found consistent links between arts participation and improved self-esteem across age groups. The explanation offered by the researchers is clear: arts activities give people a tangible sense of control over their environment, they create visible evidence of progress, and they offer a way of being part of a group that feels genuinely inclusive rather than performative.

Studies examining arts programmes for young people found that 93% of participants reported positive outcomes including increased self-esteem, reduced stress, and a real sense of pride in completing something (Miner-Romanoff, 2016). The Scottish Government’s own Connected Scotland strategy identifies arts and creative participation as a key tool for addressing isolation and building social health — a recognition that aligns directly with why The Little Art School Charity exists.

The Physical Benefits: Often Overlooked, Just as Real

4. Fine Motor Skills and Physical Coordination

The physical benefits of drawing and painting are less discussed but genuinely significant, both for older adults and for young children; demographics which we serve at the Little Art School Charity. Drawing requires and develops fine motor control — the precise coordination of hand and eye that underpins everything from fastening buttons to writing a message. Research published in the journal Neuropsychologia (Alain et al., 2019) and in PLOS ONE (Bolwerk et al., 2014) found that regular visual arts practice supports the preservation of these skills as people age, and can slow their natural decline.

This matters in Scotland right now. The Scottish Health Survey 2024 recorded that half of all adults — 50% — are now living with at least one long-term health condition, the highest proportion ever measured. Nearly a third of those (32%) report that it affects their mobility. A gentle, enjoyable activity that also works the hands and the visual system is not a trivial thing.

5. Protecting the Brain Against Decline

Perhaps the most striking physical finding concerns cognitive health. A study published in Experimental Aging Research (Wammes, Jonker & Fernandes, 2018) found that older adults who used drawing as a way of encoding and remembering information outperformed those who used other methods. The act of drawing activates memory systems that verbal techniques alone do not reach.

potential reduction in dementia risk associated with regular arts and crafts engagement — by building what neuroscientists call ‘cognitive reserve’: the brain’s protective buffer against age-related decline.

Hovi Care Research Review, 2026, drawing on neuroscientific evidence including Bolwerk et al., 2014

The mechanism is what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve: the idea that consistently engaging multiple brain systems simultaneously — visual processing, fine motor control, spatial reasoning, creative decision-making — builds a kind of resilience. The brain becomes better at compensating when decline begins. Painting does all of this at once, which is why the evidence for its protective effect is increasingly compelling.

 6. Connection — the Benefit That Cannot Be Quantified on a Test

There is one more thing that our classes offer, and it cannot be separated from the rest; the simple experience of being in a room with other people, doing something together. Scotland’s loneliness data is sobering. One in five adults felt lonely in the past week. For young adults and for those over 75, it is closer to one in four.

The Scottish Government’s Recovering Our Connections strategy (2023–2026) makes clear that this is a public health crisis, not a private sadness. A large UK survey of nearly 6,000 adults (the HEartS Survey, published in BMC Public Health, 2021) found that arts participation supports social connection through multiple distinct pathways — not just by putting people in the same room, but by giving them something to make, to talk about, and to share. Longitudinal research published in PNAS Nexus (2024) confirms that regular arts engagement is associated with higher life satisfaction, greater resilience, stronger sense of purpose — and lower levels of loneliness. These effects compound over time.

Why How We Do It Matters as Much as What We Do

There is a temptation, when presenting evidence like this, to treat ‘drawing and painting classes’ as an undifferentiated category — as if any room with pencils and a teacher would produce the same results. The research does not support that. The quality of the environment matters enormously.

Kaimal’s 2016 stress study was clear on one point: the benefits did not depend on artistic skill, but they did depend on a supportive setting. This is also what the NHS and University of the Arts London have recognised in their therapeutic arts work — that the conditions for creative healing are specific. People need to feel genuinely safe. Not ‘safe’ as a word on a leaflet, but actually welcomed, not compared, not rushed, and not made to feel that their natural way of drawing is wrong. The Little Art School Charity was built around exactly that understanding. Our classes are designed to be the opposite of the experience many adults carry from school: the red pen, the ‘that’s not quite right,’ the sense that drawing is a talent you either have or don’t. We know from the evidence — and from the people who come through our doors — that given the right conditions, almost everyone can find something real and restorative in making art. That is what we are here to provide.

The Evidence at a Glance

75% cortisol reduction after 45 mins of art-making

 3,000+ supporting studies reviewed by the WHO

73% lower dementia risk

1 in 3 Scottish GP appointments: mental health

1 in 5 Scots lonely last week

“Building self-esteem, one drawing at a time.”

Conclusions

The case for what The Little Art School Charity does is not built on sentiment. It is built on a substantial, peer-reviewed, internationally recognised body of evidence that says, with considerable consistency; making art is good for people. It reduces the physical markers of stress. It eases anxiety. It builds self-esteem. It protects cognitive function. It keeps hands working. And it connects people to each other in ways that matter for long-term health.

In Scotland in 2025, one in three people will be affected by a mental health problem this year. NHS waiting lists are long. Funding has been cut. Loneliness is a public health emergency. The people who most need support are often the least likely to seek it through formal channels — and sometimes the most in need of a low-threshold, welcoming, genuinely human space in which to simply make something.

That is what we offer. The evidence says it works. We’ve seen it work. And we intend to keep doing it.