A Conceptual Framework for Social Health and Wellbeing in Community Elucidated by Folk Performing Arts Groups in the Context of COVID-19

Group-based music and dance performing arts participation is associated with positive social health and wellbeing outcomes, including enhanced social connection, cohesion and bonding. Traditional music and dance practices may provide additional benefits because, as forms of intangible cultural heritage, they strengthen cultural belonging, identity, prosocial behaviour, and intergenerational social ties. Despite increasing recognition of the social value of group performing arts participation in community, little is known about participants’ experiences of traditional music and dance practices and an integrative framework for diverse notions of social health and wellbeing across contexts is lacking. This study develops a novel conceptual framework for understanding social health and wellbeing in culturally grounded group arts participation, situating diverse theoretical perspectives within the lived experiences of participatory folk music and dance communities amid COVID-19 social distancing. An online questionnaire gathered self-reported social health and wellbeing, socio-demographic information and free-text reflections on participants’ folk groups since COVID-19 and social distancing. Multiple regression analyses revealed significant associations between socio-demographic characteristics and social wellbeing measures of the ability to participate and satisfaction with participation in social roles and activities, social support and social isolation. Free-text analyses revealed conceptual overlaps between social functioning, relationships, positive emotions and social distancing-related motivational challenges. Integrating the findings using an engine of wellbeing approach generated a conceptual framework of input, process and outcome variables at micro–meso–macro social levels, across structural, relational, cognitive and affective dimensions. The conceptual framing identified potential links between processes, levels and dimensions, through relational reflexivity and adaptive ability mechanisms. Embracing conceptual plurality may help overcome challenges in defining social wellbeing and support prospective investigations in different community contexts. While this study examines social health and wellbeing in folk communities during COVID-19 social distancing, its conceptual framework may also inform predictive models of how physical separation influences social wellbeing within and across marginalised groups in both pre- and post-pandemic contexts.