Social cure and savouring: Attending live music events is associated with wellbeing and behaviour changes

There is strong evidence demonstrating a link between engagement with live music and health and wellbeing outcomes. However, much of this research focuses on traditional forms of engagement such as playing an instrument, or purposefully using live music as a targeted health intervention. There is limited research exploring the wellbeing consequences of regular gig and/or festival attendance, or the mechanisms for the effects of such attendance. Drawing on the ‘social cure’ approach to group membership and wellbeing, we carried out two complementary studies investigating this relationship through semi-structured interviews (n=20) and a pre-registered cross-sectional survey (n=2,021). In line with the ‘social cure’, results suggest a relationship between regular event attendance and wellbeing, contingent on group processes within the audience (identification, relationality, collective self-realization) as well as support from event staff – a novel finding. Additionally, we observe that individuals who experience attendance-related wellbeing often exhibit affective and behavioural changes that seem to actively reinforce their overall sense of wellbeing. To our knowledge, this finding points to a potential positive-feedback loop between wellbeing and subsequent behaviour that has not been widely reported in existing research.