The Role of Artistic Creative Activities in Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic some Australians turned to artistic creative activities (ACAs) as a way of managing their own mental health and well-being. This study examined the role of ACAs in regulating emotion and supporting mental health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also attempted to identify at-risk populations. We proposed that (1) participants would use ACAs as avoidance-based emotion regulation strategies; and (2) music engagement would be used for emotion regulation. Australian participants (N = 653) recruited from the general public completed an online survey, which included scales targeting anxiety (GAD7 scale), depression (PHQ9 scale) and loneliness (two UCLA Loneliness Scales, referring to “Before” and “Since” COVID-19). Participants reported which ACAs they had undertaken and ceased during the pandemic using an established list and ranked their undertaken ACAs in terms of effectiveness at making them “feel better.” For their top-ranked ACA, participants then completed the Emotion Regulation Scale for Artistic Creative Activities (ERS-ACA), and if participants had undertaken any musical ACAs, also the Musical Engagement Questionnaire (MusEQ). The results supported both hypotheses. ANOVAs indicated that participants ranked significantly higher on the “avoidance” ERS-ACA subscale than the other subscales, and that participants ranked significantly higher on the emotion regulation and musical preference MusEQ subscales than the other subscales. Additionally, while ACAs such as “Watching films or TV shows” and “Cookery or baking” were common, they ranked poorly as effective methods of emotion regulation, whereas “Listening to music” was the second-most frequently undertaken ACA and also the most effective. “Singing” and “Dancing” were among the most ceased ACAs but also ranked among the most effective for emotion regulation, suggesting that support for developing pandemic-safe approaches to these ACAs may provide well-being benefits in future crises. Additionally, correlation analyses showed that younger participants, those who took less exercise during the pandemic, and those with the highest musical engagement reported the poorest well-being. We conclude that ACAs provided an important resource for supporting mental health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and could potentially support mental health and well-being in future crises.

Music in times of COVID-19

“…in press B). Conversely, negatively valenced music was prominently consumed by younger age groups (Vidas et al 2021) who, as previously mentioned, generally experienced greater wellbeing impediments (Kiernan et al 2021;H. Wang et al 2020).…”

“…Those who were female (Torales et al 2020;C. Wang et al 2020;Young et al, 2021), young (Kiernan et al 2021;H. Wang et al 2020;Young et al, 2021), single, separated or divorced (Ribeiro et al, 2021), unemployed (Young et al, 2021), possessed lower education levels (Mazza et al 2020), worked in the healthcare sector (Benfante et al 2020), had limited access to personal protective equipment (C. , or had received prior chronic or mental health diagnoses (Young et al, 2021), for example, suffered more severely.…”

“…Mothers who used music to regulate their children's emotions in home confinement, for example, reported higher wellbeing and satisfaction with their parental role (Cho & Ilari, 2021). Indeed, many rated music the most effective creative activity for enhancing mental wellbeing goals such as enjoyment, maintaining a good mood, and venting negative emotions (Granot et al 2021;Kiernan et al 2021). Others have found that the coping effectiveness of musical engagement at least matched or outperformed competitors such as exercise, sleep, and changing location (Vidas et al 2021).…”

“…Engaging with music thus became the potentially most frequent solitary leisure activity during lockdown (Finnerty et al, 2021). Various self-report studies suggest it was adopted for coping purposes by more than 50% of the general population (Cabedo-Mas et al 2021;Fink et al 2021;Kiernan et al 2021), providing benefits especially for younger people and those to whom music already held great importance (Fink et al 2021;Granot et al 2021;Henry et al, 2021;Martínez-Castilla et al, 2021).…”

Creativity in lockdown: Understanding how music and the arts supported mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic by age group

“…With these points in mind, we investigated the following research questions: RQ1: Which ACAs do people in Australia aged 18-24, 25-34, 35-54, and over 55 report as being the most effective at making them "feel better" during the COVID-19 pandemic? RQ2: What similarities and differences can be observed in the ways people in Australia aged 18-24, 25-34, 35-54, and Based on the findings of the literature discussed in the introduction, especially the findings of Kiernan et al (2021) and Drake et al (2022), our preliminary hypothesis (H1) was that music listening would rank as the most effective ACA for making people "feel better" during the pandemic in each of the four age groups. Based on the findings of Tarrant et al (2002), O'Neill (2017) and Levstek and Banerjee (2021), our secondary hypothesis (H2) was that participants aged 18-24 would be more likely to use music for the purposes of identity expression than older participants during the pandemic.…”