ABOUT THE FESTIVAL — EST. 2026
Reimagining Delhi as the Capital of Care.
DAHF begins from a simple conviction: that the arts are not decorative. They are a form of medicine, a way of knowing, and a means of building communities where people truly flourish.
Art is not decoration. It is infrastructure.
THE STORY
DAHF begins from a simple premise: that the arts are not a luxury, a supplement, or an afterthought in the story of human health. They are one of its oldest and most powerful chapters.
In 2026, for the first time, Delhi will host a festival dedicated entirely to exploring what happens when artists, clinicians, researchers and communities come together — not in a conference room, but in galleries, parks, hospitals, universities and public squares across the city.
DAHF is an argument. An argument that Delhi — with its extraordinary cultural density, its vast public health challenges, and its 35 million stories — is exactly the right city to ask these questions out loud.
WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS
Creative engagement measurably reduces stress, anxiety and social isolation.
Participatory arts support recovery from illness and improve quality of life.
Cultural participation strengthens community cohesion and civic trust.
Arts-integrated care makes health systems more human and more effective.
Sources: WHO, Arts Council England, Cochrane Review, Creative Health APPG.
DELHI · ARTS · HEALTH
OUR VISION
To nurture a future where arts and creativity are recognised as fundamental to health, healing, and human flourishing.
A city doesn’t heal its people. It helps them heal each other.
Our vision is not aspirational — it is already being built, one conversation, one collaboration, one community at a time.
CREATIVITY
The Human Instinct
Creativity is not a talent reserved for artists. It is a fundamental human capacity — and one of the most powerful tools we have for healing, connection and understanding.
COLLABORATION
Across Every Discipline
DAHF brings artists into conversation with clinicians, researchers with community members, policy makers with practitioners. The intersections are where the most interesting work happens.
WELLBEING
Beyond the Clinical
Health is not merely the absence of illness. It is belonging, purpose, expression and joy. The festival holds all of these as legitimate and urgent concerns of our city’s health.
SYSTEMS CHANGE
Building the Evidence
Every programme, partnership and commission at DAHF is designed to demonstrate what happens when arts and health systems work together — and to make the case for structural change.
THE CASE FOR ARTS & HEALTH
900 studies. One conclusion : creativity heals.
OUR MISSION
Five days. One city. Three missions.
Three interlocking intentions — an extraordinary festival, genuine community partnership, and a legacy that outlasts the programme.
THE FESTIVAL
An extraordinary gathering
To produce a five-day festival of the highest quality — gathering artists, performers, researchers and practitioners whose work sits at the intersection of creativity and health. Five days of performances, workshops, exhibitions, talks and public art that Delhi has never seen before.
THE COMMUNITY
Rooted in every neighbourhood
To work in genuine partnership with Delhi’s communities — particularly those with least access to both cultural and health resources. The festival is not delivered to the city; it is built with it.
LONG-TERM IMPACT
A legacy that outlasts the programme
To contribute to a growing body of evidence, practice and advocacy for arts and health in India — seeding partnerships, training practitioners, and making the case, programme by programme, that this work belongs at the heart of how we build healthy cities.
WHY NOW?
Arts and health is one of the fastest-growing movements in global public policy.
For decades, the connection between creativity and health was treated as supplementary — a kindness rather than a science. That is changing. Health systems across the world are recognising what communities have always known: the arts are not decorative. They are essential.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
900+ studies reviewed by WHO confirm the arts improve mental and physical health outcomes.
Social prescribing — doctors referring patients to arts activities — now embedded in NHS England and 30+ national health systems.
India’s National Health Policy 2017 acknowledges the role of traditional and creative practices in community wellbeing.
GLOBAL SOUTH ARTS & HEALTH INITIATIVE
A new centre of gravity for arts and health — in the Global South.
DAHF is committed to shifting that geography — placing Delhi, and the Global South, at the heart of a new international conversation about arts and health.
EDUCATION
Training the Next Generation
DAHF partners with universities and arts organisations across Asia, Africa and Latin America to develop shared training programmes, fellowships and residencies in arts and health practice.
RESEARCH
Building the Evidence Base
We commission and publish research that reflects the cultural and social realities of the Global South — not simply applying Western frameworks, but developing new methodologies rooted in local knowledge.
COLLABORATION
Cross-Border Partnership
Through structured exchange programmes, co-commissions and shared advocacy, DAHF connects practitioners, policymakers and communities across continents to build a genuinely global movement.
KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE
Sharing What We Know
An open-access library of case studies, toolkits and research findings — translated, contextualised and made freely available to practitioners working in low-resource settings around the world.
DELHI ARTS & HEALTH FESTIVAL — 2026
Five days. One city. A movement.
Join us in Delhi for an extraordinary gathering of artists, clinicians, researchers and communities — building the case for creativity as care.
INDIA & DELHI’S OPPORTUNITY
A city where culture, creativity, health and community have always intersected.
Delhi is not simply a location for this festival. It is a co-author. A city of 35 million people, carrying millennia of creative tradition alongside one of the world’s most complex and contested public health landscapes.
From classical Kathak to street theatre, from AIIMS to the hundreds of community health centres serving the city’s most marginalised communities — Delhi holds, within a single urban boundary, everything that the arts and health movement needs to become something genuinely new.
India’s cultural wealth is vast. Its health challenges are real. The opportunity is to place them in conversation — as co-production, as a new form of civic life.
FESTIVAL IMPACT GOALS
What we are building toward.
Each strand of the programme works toward six distinct and measurable kinds of change.
WHAT WE ARE BUILDING TOWARD
01 — Community
Community Building
Fostering new relationships between artists, clinicians, researchers and Delhi’s communities through shared creative experience and long-term collaboration.
02 — Ecosystem
Ecosystem Development
Building the infrastructure for a sustained arts and health field in India — training, networks, commissioning pathways and organisational capacity.
03 — Research
Research & Knowledge
Generating and sharing new evidence about what arts-based approaches can achieve in Indian health contexts — openly published and freely accessible.
04 — Practice
Professional Practice
Equipping artists, facilitators and health professionals with new skills, frameworks and peer connections to carry this work forward beyond the festival week.
05 — Public
Public Engagement
Reaching audiences and participants who would not ordinarily enter a gallery or a clinical setting — bringing arts and health into parks, streets and community spaces.
06 — Systems
Systems Influence
Making the case, through demonstrated practice and published evidence, for structural change in how India’s health and cultural systems invest in creative life.
Delhi Arts and Health Festival 