Pinnaroo arts project proven to be town health booster

The Pinnaroo Project is the brainchild of the Mallee Arts Group, which formed eight years ago to increase art and cultural services in the agriculture-based community.

The Mallee Studio (the project's art and wellbeing hub) is located in the town's main street and, since 2021, has run more than 120 workshops and events.

TPP co-chair Deb Colwill said it was "always in the plan" to have a quantitative study run on the initiative and was really happy with the outcome.

"During the course of the project, we had already felt we were seeing some great feedback from people with some really good outcomes, with people making new connections or picking up activities for a new hobby and things like that," she said.

"So we weren't disappointed when the final data was released."

Ms Colwill said one interesting finding was that study participants were potentially eating healthier and had added more exercise to their lives, following these art activities.

"We've got examples of people that met at one of our creative workshops, realised they lived down the road from each other, and then started making a day to walk together regularly," she said.

"And although that's not an obvious connection to make from a creative project, we could see the social side of holding these events was also beneficial.

"When we distributed the survey report throughout the community, they were all snapped up pretty quickly - there has been a real interest by the town."

Flinders University Professor Robyn Clark and her team spent the past three years measuring the project's impact on community health - both mental and cardiovascular.

Overall, TPP conducted 564 health screenings and recorded 616 participations in various creative arts activities.

According to the final report, satisfaction levels were "very high" (90pc were happy with their experience) and feedback comments showed the benefit of learning new skills, social engagement, which reduced stress, with many indicating they would become regular attendees.

"For those who added art into their lives, there was a reduction in depression, lower smoking rates, healthier eating habits (higher adult and child fruit and vegetable consumption), better overall self-rated health and an economic value of $2.30 for every $1 invested in the project," the report said.

Ms Colwill said the return on investment for the community was another highlight of the project.

"Some of that has been from improved health outcomes, but also from people spending money in town when they come in for workshops etc," she said.

Prof Clark said the results had been a "wonderful surprise", considering there had been many negative community impacts along the way, such as COVID-19, economic recessions, bushfires and droughts.

"[The survey] just demonstrates the resilience of rural communities, particularly in Mallee people," she said.

"I've been working with them for five years, and I think the community spirit and commitment to this project was really, really good."

Prof Clark said it wasn't the first time a project of this kind had been run, but it was unique in the way it was measured and that it was within a rural community.

One of the interesting findings for Prof Clark was the increase in how many hours people assigned to art.

"Community members actually tripled their number of hours," she said.

"They went from like once a month to once a fortnight with all of the workshops that were going on.

"And I think by them going to more creative activities, we really had a big impact on town culture."

Prof Clark said more men attending the workshops and events was also part of a cultural change.

"We had lots of activities, photography, creative writing, welding, the poppies for the memorial garden that the local fellas got involved with," she said.

"We also saw an increase participation by people that lived alone in the community, and we had people meeting each other who'd lived in the town 20 years and had never met before in these workshops. So there was also strong networking afterwards.

"There were those kinds of cultural community changes, which I didn't think would be so powerful from my scientific point of view of evaluating it."

Prof Clark said one aspect of the survey they had really hoped to improve on was mental health.

"We noticed that for those who were involved with art, there was a reduction in depression, particularly in community members who actually were depressed," she said.

"That halved from 19pc of community members who actually had moderate to use depression. We halved that rate to 9pc, which is probably the group we really wanted to have impact on the most.

"And there was this spin off effect, that when people feel good, they started to take up healthy lifestyle activities like less alcohol. There was less alcohol intake in the arts group, and lower smoking rates, which is fantastic.

"And in both adults and children, healthy eating habits improve, with more fruits and vegetables. And the folks who were involved in art, both the kids and the adults rated their quality of life much higher than those who weren't involved.

"These were fantastic outcomes."

Prof Clark said since the report's release, they had been "overwhelmed" by the interest from other communities.

"One of our aims was to produce a model of evaluation for arts community arts projects that we could share with any community in Australia, and we've been overwhelmed by inquiries from several other community towns who want to work with us to use our model to evaluate their arts projects," she said.

TPP has been financially supported through grants from the Southern Mallee District Council, Country Arts SA, Regional Arts Australia, the Department of Human Services, Foundation for Rural Regional Renewal and Flinders University's Caring Futures Institute.

Their events are on-going, with mosaic and watercolour workshops coming up.

Ms Colwill said their steering group would continue to look at bringing more creative opportunities to the community, with thoughts of potentially expanding the program into neighbouring towns.