Why Creative Work Needs a Different Kind of Health & Safety Training

Anyone working in the arts will recognise that a lot of mainstream health and safety training doesn’t really reflect the spaces that are actually worked in day to day. The work moves between buildings, teams, communities and contexts, and the risks that are managed shift with them. Whilst the risks are practical, they’re also about people, relationships, expectations and the unpredictable nature of creative environments.

When we started developing our new Health & Safety courses, we knew they needed to speak to the realities of creative and cultural work rather than repeat generic guidance. Here’s how Lesley, our Learning Development Manager who designed our courses, thinks about health and safety when nothing around the workplace is ​‘standard’.

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Health & Safety When Nothing Is ​‘Standard’

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately working on risk assessment and health and safety training for people in the creative, cultural, and heritage sectors.

What’s become really clear is this: most ​‘off-the-shelf’ health and safety training just doesn’t quite fit what we do.

We don’t live in a world of fixed desks and predictable routines. One day you’re in a theatre, the next you’re in a school hall, a listed building, a park, a community centre, or a borrowed room above a library. There are audiences, participants, artists, technicians, young people, families, staff, freelancers and volunteers all moving through the same spaces.

So yes, we absolutely need to think about the standard stuff – slips, trips and falls, working at height, electrics, manual handling, fire safety. But we also have to think about people: safeguarding, accessibility, crowd flow, emotional safety, and how it all works when you’re sharing venues or partnering with other organisations.

That’s really where these courses have come from.

More recently, my training as a counsellor has added another layer to how I think about risk.

It’s made me much more aware that safety isn’t only about the physical environment; it’s also about psychological safety and how people feel in the space, how supported they are, and how we respond when something difficult comes up. This inspired me to design our eLearning course on Creating Wellbeing Aware Environments. 

Many of the groups we work with bring their own histories, vulnerabilities, and needs. A workshop, performance, or community event can sometimes stir up strong emotions or memories. So part of good risk management, for me, is asking:

• Do people feel they can speak up if something doesn’t feel right?
 • Have we thought about how content, space, and group dynamics might affect different participants?
 • Are staff and freelancers prepared for the emotional as well as the practical side of the work?

This counselling perspective has really shaped how I talk about risk in the training – it’s not a separate ​‘wellbeing’ conversation, but part of how we plan, deliver, and review projects.

My own background is rooted in community programmes and working in external venues. I’m very familiar with turning up to a space you’ve never seen before, realising the doors don’t open quite how you expected, the lighting isn’t ideal, there’s a step where you thought there’d be a ramp, or the ​‘quiet room’ is actually a noisy corridor.

In those moments, health and safety isn’t a form on a shared drive; it’s you, in real time, making decisions that keep people safe and still allow the event, workshop, or performance to feel welcoming and enjoyable.

That’s the mindset I’ve brought into these courses. Rather than starting with long lists of regulations, I start with how we actually work:

• Projects that move across multiple spaces and partners
 • Teams made up of staff, freelancers, and volunteers
 • Activities involving children, young people, and adults with a wide range of needs
 • Buildings that might be historic, quirky, or not really designed for what we’re asking them to do

In the sessions, we look at things like:

• How to make legal duties and responsibilities feel clear and manageable, rather than overwhelming
 • How to develop a risk assessment, whether you’re in your own space or a community venue, outdoor space, or partner building you don’t control
 • How safeguarding, inclusion, wellbeing, and psychological safety sit alongside the more traditional aspects of health and safety

For me, good health and safety in our sector isn’t about stopping things; it’s about making the work possible in a safe, thoughtful way.

That might mean:

• Tweaking how people enter and leave a space so it’s less stressful and more accessible
 • Spotting where a creative idea just needs a small adjustment to make it safe, rather than saying no to it altogether
 • Building in time to check a venue properly instead of discovering issues five minutes before doors open

I want people to come away from these courses feeling more confident and better equipped, not just to fill in a form, but to think practically and creatively about risk in all the environments we work in, with all the people we work alongside.

If you’re in a creative, cultural, or heritage setting and you’ve ever thought, ​‘This generic health and safety stuff doesn’t really fit what we do,’ then you’re exactly who I had in mind when I was writing these courses.

If what Lesley describes resonates, our new Health & Safety courses have been designed specifically for the realities of creative work, and might be a helpful fit for you or your team. They’re practical, sector-specific, focused on the environments and challenges that are actually faced, rather than the ones imagined in generic training, and are designed to make the whole process feel more manageable and relevant.

Here’s what participants of our recent Risk Assessment session had to say:
 

• “Really insightful, amazed that I can be inspired by Risk Assessments.”
• “The facilitator was excellent, very open, engaging and warm. Kept what can be quite a daunting and heavy subject accessible, light and supportive.”
• “I didn’t know anything about how to create a risk assessment before this training, but now I would feel confident creating one. Never thought learning about risk assessment documentation could be fun!”

You can explore the courses here, which include live sessions on both Health & Safety and Risk Assessment.

If you’d like to talk about a version shaped around your organisation or projects, we’d love to hear from you at training@​artswork.​org.​uk 

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About Lesley

Lesley Wood is Artswork Professional Development’s Learning Development Manager. She has over 25 years’ experience designing and delivering training across topics including safeguarding, wellbeing, youth engagement, project management and leadership. Her professional background spans community programmes, arts education, work in external and non-traditional venues, and counselling practice, all of which inform her person-centred approach to risk and safety.

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