Kunle Adewale Amplifies Art-Based Interventions in Healthcare at a UCL Lecture

Yinka Olatunbosun

A global creative health leader, Kunle Adewale has yet again championed art-based interventions while delivering a landmark lecture at University College London (UCL) on January 20. From exploring the intersection of arts, health and social transformation, Adewale shared his lived experience as a Nigerian-born artist whose contributions into the global creative healthcare scene had helped to share discourse on arts and health interventions.

The distinguished gathering of scholars, students and researchers delved into Creative Health, highlighting Adewale’s pioneering work as an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, development practitioner and creative health practitioner. The lecture celebrated his contributions at the crossroads of arts, health, community development and global social change.

The lecture at UCL’s MASc Creative Health for students, faculty and practitioners inspired attendees to consider how lived experience can become a methodology, as personal passion can ignite global movements, and how one practitioner’s commitment shapes policy, research, and the future of Creative Health.

Born and raised in Mushin, Lagos, Nigeria, Adewale’s early life in a culturally rich yet socio-economically unequal environment profoundly influenced his practice. He faced limited access to healthcare and education, experienced failures and encountered personal struggles with mental health, including childhood trauma that led him to contemplate suicide. He also grappled with grief, the loss of a child and parents, community unrest, domestic violence, discrimination, family illness such as dementia, a father with PTSD from the Nigerian war as a veteran, disability communities, families displaced by war, terror, children and young people with mental health problems and more. These experiences fostered a deep empathy for marginalised populations and underserved communities.

Adewale highlighted his personal encounter with creativity in an unstructured space and how that transformed his life, through finding purpose and meaning in discarded materials, repurposed as masterpieces. He further shared how this lived experience and practice transformed patients’ healthcare experiences in mental vault health hospitals in Nigeria.

Adewale’s work is urgent and grounded in real-world challenges. This fuels his commitment to community building, education and cultural empowerment, ultimately inspiring social change.

His practice spans Arts in Health, Community Development, Youth Empowerment, Global Health Equity, and Cultural Diplomacy. As the founder of Arts in Medicine Projects (AIM) and the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship, one of the world’s largest arts and health networks and creative health initiatives, Kunle has brought arts‑based interventions to hospitals, prisons, correctional centres, schools, refugee communities, and international institutions.

Highlights of Adewale’s transformative interventions across sectors include Arts in Medicine arts in health initiatives: bedside arts, patient workshops, staff wellbeing programmes, and art‑in‑health practices; Community Creative Health Projects: youth leadership, mental health arts programmes, creative ageing, and disability inclusion; Global Leadership: training healthcare workers, fostering international collaborations, and leading cross‑cultural exchanges; Research & Capacity Building: curriculum development, practitioner training, and global advocacy for arts‑in‑health policy.

Kunle Adewale, in his lecture, affirms, “Being immersed in the arts can wash away the dust in our lives, enrich our imagination, unlock our hidden potential, and give us a new sense of purpose in making the world healthier for others. Art transforms us inward before we can transform the world outward.”

Kunle’s clear focus is access to creativity, which enables emotional expression. Emotional expression improves well-being, which in turn strengthens communities, which in turn create ecosystems, which in turn drive systemic change.

Dr Carrie H. Ryan, FHEA, Lecturer (Teaching) in Creative Health and Medical Anthropology at University College London, said, “It was really useful for students to hear more about the resource inequalities that shape the field of creative health.”

Kunle’s impact is trans‑disciplinary and intercontinental through collaborations on his pioneering initiatives, including the Global South Arts and Health Initiatives, which have reached 41 cities and more than 500,000 people worldwide. In addition, there is the Young Leaders for Arts in Health Initiative, which he founded in 2025 in partnership with the Commonwealth and other organisations, practitioners, and professionals, reaching over 300,000 people in 16 cities worldwide.

Kunle Adewale’s lecture shows him to be a respected global leader catalysing global movements, amplifying arts and health, building capacities and ecosystems through cross‑border collaborations, international convenings, youth‑led civic engagements, founding a global network of creative health practitioners, and partnering with foreign missions, diplomatic communities, and international organisations, among others.

Kunle’s visionary leadership and landmark positions him as a visionary architect of Creative Health and a global thought leader whose influence continues to expand, including the integration of creative health into public health strategies, government recognition of arts‑in‑health initiatives such as the National Arts in Health Week in Nigeria, Global South Arts and Health Festivals: City-wide celebration of arts and health, Young Leaders for Arts and Health Initiatives, research on arts‑based interventions, and increased global south leadership capacity development.

One of the participants in the lecture said, “It was so inspiring to get to know Kunle’s journey and to learn about the many Creative Health initiatives happening around the world, including my home country, Argentina!”

His lecture highlights lived experience as a legitimate methodology and data in research, local creative health as influencing global impact, and leadership rooted in service to others, as exemplified by Kunle Adewale’s cultural humility and servant leadership.

While reflecting on the lecture, Veronica Franklin Gould, Founder and President of Art4 Dementia, said: “It was especially moving to see how mental health patients transformed their depressingly drab area into an energising, colourful setting and created monumental designs that surely cheered all who live, work, and pass by. Global Arts in Medicine is phenomenal.”

A student wrote in an appreciation letter to Adewale: “I had the privilege of attending your talk during our ‘Lived Experience’ class yesterday and was profoundly inspired by your personal journey and the impactful work you are doing through the Arts in Medicine Fellowship. The way you have transformed your experiences into a force for supporting others deeply resonates with the core values of Creative Health — using creative expression to foster healing and growth. Thank you for sharing your story and work with us. Your talk has given me a renewed perspective on the social potential of this area.”

Kunle Adewale is an internationally recognised creative health global leader whose inspirational leadership and work bridge art, health, and community development. His initiatives have reached communities across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, inspiring a new generation of creative health leaders and reshaping global narratives around arts‑in‑health.