This book brings together leading UK researchers in the field of arts and health, including creative arts therapies. The chapters are based on presentations originally given at a UK seminar series on scholarship and research on connections between the creative arts, health and wellbeing, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, in both Western Europe and East Asia, towns and cities helped to shape the individual consciousness, against the background of a more traditional society in which collective values remained strong.