Clive Parkinson was the Director of Arts for Health and Reader in Arts, Health and Social Justice at Manchester Metropolitan University until July 2021 when, after 20 years, he left to explore pastures new.
He has been closely involved with arts and health developments in the UK, Europe, Australia and Japan and has been central to strategic developments and practical activity in this field. Over 2011 he facilitated a series of participatory workshops across the North West of the UK exploring the impact of the arts on wider society and developing the Manifesto for Arts & Health. Between 2009 and 2023 he has written a regular blog which has a large international readership and which offers opportunities to access funding, training and networking, while holding up a critical lens to its own community.
Between 2012 and 2018 he was a director of the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing and has been closely involved with the development of an All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health & Wellbeing to which the Alliance provided the secretariat. Since its inception, he has been the north west regional champion for arts and health on the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance and although moving on to those new pastures, he continues to support both the Alliance and the National Centre for Creative Health at arms length. In 2022 the University of Manchester made him honorary chair of Creative Health & Social Change.
Clive has worked closely with Socialiniai Meno Projektai in the Republic of Lithuania to develop culturally focused research, advocacy and policy. In the UK, Italy and Turkey he has worked with people in recovery, reframing thinking about substance misuse from a cultural perspective. He wrote the Recoverist Manifesto in 2014 after working collectively with people affected by substance misuse and he continues to collaborate with the groundbreaking Portraits of Recovery. The Manifesto is available in Dutch, English, Gaelic, Italian, Lithuanian and Turkish on the writing page.
A regular speaker at international conferences, between 2009 and 2016 he supported the development of the Australian Centre for Arts and Health, speaking at their conference regularly. Over the last five years he has spoken at MoMA, TATE Liverpool and the V&A and numerous international events including conferences and seminars in Japan, Estonia, Ireland, China and Cambodia. In Australia he was keynote speaker at Artlands Dubbo in 2016 and in 2017 he was a commissioned artist at The Big Anxiety Festival. Between 2014 and 2017 he worked in collaboration with Australian artist Vic McEwan on an artists residency at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital where he wrote the book Critical Care as a response to McEwan’s practice and the unfolding relationships that took place within the clinical environment.
He convened the Manchester Institute for Arts, Health & Social Change (MIAHSC) and in 2019 compiled and published The Manchester Declaration following a series of workshops and conversations with citizens and workers across Greater Manchester - people who are unified in their belief that the arts, in all their forms, offer a collective force for social change. In 2021 he wrote A Social Glue, a report for Greater Manchester Combined Authority which explores the potential of culture and the arts across the city region and setting out some tangible recommendations informing The Greater Manchester Creative Health Strategy published in November 2022. In June 2024 he formally closed MIAHSC.
After leaving school at sixteen with few qualifications, he attended the local art-college and began working at a large Victorian hospital for adults with learning disabilities where he established an artists studio alongside residents of this closed community. He describes this period as being the most formative in his life, where he learned and grew as an artist alongside the people living in the hospital. During his time there he undertook an undergraduate degree in Independent Studies and Visual Art at Lancaster University where his research focused on the relationship between creativity, culture the arts and health. He is a doctor of philosophy.
Employed variously by the NHS and voluntary sector, he has led on mental health promotion for an NHS Trust and managed day services for people affected by schizophrenia in the seaside town of Morecambe. Before working for Manchester Metropolitan University, he lived in Cornwall and was the development director of Arts for Health Cornwall & Isles of Scilly. Clive lives with Multiple Myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, which he describes as an ‘inconsiderate lodger’, but increasingly he has found his curiosity and imagination piqued by the increased awareness of his own mortality. His keynote for the Culture, Health & Wellbeing International Conference 2021 explored his ruminations on power, inequality and sustainability through his experience of treatment - and his walks into the hills and woods behind his home town.
He is currently exploring an extensive and unpublished archive relating to the writer and artist, Denton Welch and is experimenting with found super 8 home cine film, reimagining the unknown narratives of strangers. Together with the writer Jenn Ashworth he has been exploring the tricky space between nature writing, the cult of wellbeing, friendship and mortality. In spring 2024 her new book exploring elements of this collaboration will be published by Sceptre.
Addressing social inequities has been central to his thinking and practice, and his work has always had a strong focus on mental health and living well across the life-course, regardless of any diagnoses or labels.
This website offers an overview of his work and thinking and provides ways of getting in touch if you would like to.
