DCMS has published a literature review on the social and health effects of visits to museums and participation in the arts and sport.  The short report on health is predicated on research by Daniel Fujiwara, and found that there are potential savings to the NHS from all the activities assessed, but that savings were most strongly associated with sport.  Estimated savings per person on GP visits are £13.25 for sport participation, £5.07 for arts audiences, museums £1.89, libraries £1.05 and heritage £2.59.   Total predicted NHS savings across the whole population are £44.7m for museums and £384.9m for all sports.

A literature review exploring the social benefits of museums found that the best evidence was around the positive social effects of volunteering.  Research in Scotland in 2009, and from the recent ‘In Touch’ programme run by museums in Manchester found that volunteers benefitted from skills development and greater employability.   Evidence around wider social and educational benefits was sparse and anecdotal, but the report writers say that drawing from the CASE database may have meant that they missed some results as it “was not compiled for the purposes of identifying social impacts literature specifically.  This issue seems to have affected heritage and MLA searches particularly”. Gov.uk (health), Gov.uk (social impacts)