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Systematic Review
The authors state:
"The review sought to address the question ‘how are space or place, intangible assets and volunteering conceptualised in reported qualitative research findings on sport/physical activity and participatory arts for enhancing wellbeing and alleviating loneliness across the adult life course (16+ years)?’
The authors state:
"The fifty-nine qualitative studies included in this review focus on understanding and conceptualising place and space, wellbeing and/or loneliness in participatory arts, sport or physical activity.
Five key thematic areas and their findings are identified, which concern:
(i) belonging and identity in place and space
(ii) places and spaces of community and locality
(iii) therapeutic and sensory spaces
(iv) safe spaces and
(v) temporal aspects of place and space (place-temporality).
These themes point to processes by which participatory arts and sport operate to enhance wellbeing and/or alleviate loneliness. The evidence in this review means we define processes in terms of human relationships extending to emotional, social, cultural and organisational ways by which place/space connect with taking part in participatory arts or sports for enhancing wellbeing and/or alleviating loneliness - or not.
We have high confidence that taking part in meaningful and appropriate places and spaces for participatory arts, sport or physical activity can enhance wellbeing and potentially alleviate loneliness through developing a sense of belonging, identity and community. We also have high confidence that the creation of therapeutic and sensory spaces for taking part contributes to enhanced wellbeing.
The review reports a judgement of moderate confidence in ensuring that there are safe spaces for taking part in arts, sport or physical activity, which can lead to wellbeing benefits including the alleviation of loneliness. A judgment of moderate confidence is made about evidence for wellbeing enhancement in relation to the patterns, timings and rhythms of movements and activities in places, and the ways that time and timing are significant to peoples’ experience (place-temporality). Moderate confidence judgements are due to moderate concerns with methodological limitations, coherence and adequacy. Most published studies obtained appropriate ethics approval although this was not always reported extensively. Methodological weaknesses of studies included a lack of exact details about the researcher’s role, potential bias and influence on sample recruitment, settings and the responses of the participants. The grey literature was of mixed quality including high quality reports with details of the methodological approach, theoretical analysis and recognition of limitations, and low quality (credibility) reports with little detail of the methods and commonly taking participant accounts at face value without theoretical analysis."
The authors state:
"The evidence in this review shows that emotional, social, cultural and political meanings that take place through participatory arts, sport and physical activities can enhance positive feelings (belonging, community, contentment and escape), but certain conditions and circumstances can also generate negative feelings of exclusion, fear and anxiety. This makes space, place and placemaking, however complex its dimensions, important for understanding and promoting wellbeing in culture and sport policy and practice.
In evaluating the findings in this review, we have moderate confidence in the evidence for safe spaces and temporal aspects of place. This largely relates to the limited extent of the literature and to methodological issues in the conduct of the reported research. There is, therefore, considerable potential to generate a more robust evidence base for policy and practice in relation to these factors and their interconnections with belonging, community and therapeutic/sensory characteristics, especially for participatory arts, sport and physical activity intervention development and evaluation."