Abstract
As societies around the world confront aging populations and growing social isolation, Cultural Prescribing has emerged as a promising approach to community-based care beyond institutional systems. While social prescribing has primarily been implemented through clinical referral models, this study examines how Naturally Emergent Creative Well-being, the interaction between individual creativity and community culture, can generate care organically through everyday practice. The research focuses on Machino Zuko ushitsu, a community art studio in Nabari City, Japan, which serves as a hub for creative participation, intergenerational exchange, and informal support. Using a participatory action research framework, qualitative data were collected through interventional fieldwork, co-creation workshops, ethnographic observation, and narrative documentation conducted between 2023 and 2025. Findings reveal a three-layered structure of cultural care: (1) Creative Well- being as the individual trigger that initiates engagement; (2) Cultural Well-being as the community-level enabler circulating through space, memory, and relationships; and (3) a broader mutual-support ecosystem sustaining everyday well-being. Together, these layers form the Conceptual Model of Naturally Emergent Creative Well-being, reframing cultural prescribing not as a program to deliver, but as an environment to cultivate. The implications for policy, cultural management, and community design are significant, suggesting a shift from providing services to nurturing the conditions under which care and connection can arise naturally.
Keywords
Creative Well-being; Cultural Well-being; Cultural Prescribing; Social Prescribing; Community-based Art; Participatory Action Research; Community Design; Arts and Health
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.752
Citation
Rui, F., Takakazu, Y., Hideaki, K., Inaniwa, S.,and Ito, T.(2025) Process Designing for Creative Well-being: How Cultural Prescribing Emerges Through Community-Based Art Practice at Machino Zukoushitsu in Nabari City, Japan, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.752
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 9 - Healthcare Design
Process Designing for Creative Well-being: How Cultural Prescribing Emerges Through Community-Based Art Practice at Machino Zukoushitsu in Nabari City, Japan
As societies around the world confront aging populations and growing social isolation, Cultural Prescribing has emerged as a promising approach to community-based care beyond institutional systems. While social prescribing has primarily been implemented through clinical referral models, this study examines how Naturally Emergent Creative Well-being, the interaction between individual creativity and community culture, can generate care organically through everyday practice. The research focuses on Machino Zuko ushitsu, a community art studio in Nabari City, Japan, which serves as a hub for creative participation, intergenerational exchange, and informal support. Using a participatory action research framework, qualitative data were collected through interventional fieldwork, co-creation workshops, ethnographic observation, and narrative documentation conducted between 2023 and 2025. Findings reveal a three-layered structure of cultural care: (1) Creative Well- being as the individual trigger that initiates engagement; (2) Cultural Well-being as the community-level enabler circulating through space, memory, and relationships; and (3) a broader mutual-support ecosystem sustaining everyday well-being. Together, these layers form the Conceptual Model of Naturally Emergent Creative Well-being, reframing cultural prescribing not as a program to deliver, but as an environment to cultivate. The implications for policy, cultural management, and community design are significant, suggesting a shift from providing services to nurturing the conditions under which care and connection can arise naturally.