Working in partnership with Southbank Centre's Arts and Wellbeing team, we designed and built Ombri — a custom digital referral platform that connects young people aged 11–25 with creative health opportunities, and generates the evidence needed to demonstrate their impact.
Creative activities have a well-established role in supporting mental health and wellbeing. But access to those activities is often fragmented, and the systems connecting young people to them — through schools, health services, community organisations, and social prescribing — rarely communicate well with one another. Southbank Centre wanted to change that. Ombri is the result: a platform that streamlines referral pathways, strengthens coordination between cultural providers and health systems, and builds a robust evidence base for creative health intervention.
Platform features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Digital referral | Enables young people to self-refer or be referred through primary and secondary care, social prescribing, schools, community hubs, youth services, and libraries |
| Co-designed experience | Young people shaped the platform's development through participatory design and co-creation, ensuring it works for the people it's built to serve |
| Integrated wellbeing measurement | An embedded survey — developed with Brunel University — measures changes in wellbeing before and after participation using validated tools including WEMWBS and EQ-5D |
| Modular architecture | Flexible infrastructure designed to adapt to local health priorities and be replicated across different regions and organisations |
| Impact evidence | Generates consistent, comparable data across partner organisations to demonstrate the outcomes of creative health programmes to funders and commissioners |
Designed with young people, not just for them
Ombri's development was grounded in co-design and participatory arts methodology. Young people were active contributors to the design process — not just end users consulted after decisions had been made. That approach shaped everything from the language and navigation of the platform to the way it handles sensitive topics like mental health and vulnerability.
The platform is built for a wide range of young people, including those who are neurodivergent, have learning disabilities, are care-experienced, or live in areas of deprivation. Accessibility and inclusion were not add-ons to the design process — they were central to it from the start.
Connecting creative culture and health systems
One of the platform's core functions is bridging a gap that has long existed between cultural organisations and health and care systems. Referral pathways into creative health programmes have historically been informal, inconsistent, and hard to navigate. Ombri formalises and simplifies those pathways — making it straightforward for a GP, social prescriber, school counsellor, or youth worker to connect a young person with the right creative opportunity at the right time.
Building the evidence base for creative health
Ombri's integrated evaluation framework — developed in collaboration with Brunel University — uses validated tools to measure changes in wellbeing before and after programme participation. This generates consistent, comparable evidence across partner organisations, giving cultural providers and commissioners the data they need to demonstrate impact, secure funding, and make the case for creative health at a system level.
The platform's modular architecture means it can be adapted to local priorities and extended to new regions — making it a foundation for scaling creative health provision beyond Southbank Centre's immediate geography.
If you work in the cultural or health sector and want to explore how digital infrastructure can strengthen access to creative health programmes, we would love to hear from you.