Why creative activities can help reduce stress at work
What happens when we stop analysing for a moment and start creating?
In 2016, researchers at Drexel University studied what happened to participants’ cortisol levels after 45 minutes of art-making. Cortisol is commonly used as a biological marker of stress.
The result was striking: 75% of participants showed lower cortisol levels after the creative session. Previous artistic experience did not appear to make a significant difference.
In other words, you do not need to be an artist to experience the potential benefits of creating.
And for workplace wellbeing, that is an interesting finding.
What happens when we stop and create?
Most working days ask our brains to do a lot.
We analyse, make decisions, solve problems, respond to messages, move between meetings and constantly process new information.
Creative activity introduces something completely different.
Instead of searching immediately for the right answer, you work with your hands. You make choices about colour, shape and movement. Your attention shifts to what is happening in front of you.
For a moment, you are doing rather than constantly analysing.
Research into art-making and wellbeing suggests that creative activity can support emotional regulation, positive mood and psychological wellbeing. But we do not need to make exaggerated claims about what is happening in the brain to recognise something important: creating gives people a different way to pause and engage.
Miksi tämä on tärkeää tiimien hyvinvoinnille
Workplace wellbeing often focuses on what individuals should do to cope better with stress.
Sleep more. Exercise. Recover. Set boundaries.
All of these things matter. But wellbeing at work is also about creating opportunities for people to pause, reflect and recognise what is affecting them.
This is something we see very clearly in our Team Creativity workshops.
When people move away from their screens and start painting, the pace changes. Conversations become different. There is room to think without immediately having to produce an answer.
That is particularly valuable for teams working under sustained pressure, navigating change or simply moving from one deadline to the next.
From individual reflection to collective understanding
For me, this is where creative work becomes especially interesting for teams.
People do not only get an opportunity to pause individually. They do it together.
As participants paint, reflect and share what they notice, different experiences start becoming visible.
One person may realise what has been draining their energy. Someone else recognises what helps them recover. A colleague may discover that another team member experiences the same workload completely differently.
Suddenly, wellbeing becomes something the team can actually talk about.
And that matters because teams cannot support each other very well if nobody knows what is happening beneath the surface.
You do not need to know how to paint
One of my favourite findings from the Drexel study is that previous art experience did not significantly influence the cortisol response.
That fits beautifully with what we see in workshops.
“I’m not creative.”
“I can’t paint.”
“I haven’t done this since school.”
We hear these comments all the time.
And then people start.
The goal is not to create something beautiful. It is to give yourself permission to stop, experiment and see what emerges.
For teams, that simple shift can create space for reflection, conversation and connection that is surprisingly difficult to find during an ordinary working day.
Creativity as part of workplace wellbeing
A painting workshop will not remove the structural causes of workplace stress, nor should creative activity replace the organizational changes that teams genuinely need.
But it can create something valuable: dedicated space to pause, make experiences visible and talk about what people need in order to work and recover well.
At Team Creativity, we use creative facilitation to help teams explore themes such as workload and recovery, collaboration, communication and change.
Because sometimes, before we can change something, we first need enough space to see it.
Haluatteko vähentää tiiminne kuormitusta luovalla ja vaikuttavalla tavalla? Ota yhteyttä Team Creativityyn, niin suunnitellaan teille sopiva työpaja.
