Table 1.

Studies characteristics.

Author	Country	Study design	Period	Inclusion/exclusion criteria	Intervention	Intervention description	Interaction	Comparator	Duration	Outcome measurement
Aydin and Kutlu (2021)	Turkey	RCT	May–October 2018	Individuals over 65 years old, Minimal Mental State Examination scale ≥19, Beck Depression Scale <30, UCLA-LS ≥ 32, BHS ≥ 4, no perception of disorder that could prevent communication, no neurological or physical condition that could affect hands, no mental disorder diagnosis	Weekly clay-based art therapy sessions of 60–90 min	Clay-based art therapy	Active	Two 30-min face-to-face interviews about health, social life, and financial issue topics	6 weeks	UCLA Loneliness Scale (UCLA-LS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS)
Beauchet et al. (2020)	Canada	Prospective cohort study	January–June 2018	Community-dwelling older adults over 65 years old, having Internet access where they lived, understanding and writing French or English, life expectancy estimated over 3 months, no planned relocation outside of the recruitment living area in the follow-up period of the study and concomitant participation in another experimental study	Weekly art-based activity known as “Thursday at the Museum” – 1.5 h once a week	Art-based activity in a group during which the participants were engaged directly in the creative process. Type of art activities: abstract painting, book binding, rolled paper, drawing live-model, mini-fanzine, stained glass painting	Active	NA	12 weeks	EuroQoL-5D (EQ-5D) - Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS)
Cetinkaya et al. (2019)	Turkey	RCT	May–October 2015	Residing in the nursing home during the study period, lack of dementia, visual problem or agitation diagnosed by a physician, not being bed bound, and accepting to participate in the study voluntarily	Ceramic painting sessions (30–35 min) twice a week	Painting a ceramic object at each session	Active	No activity	8 weeks	Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) – Life Satisfaction Scale (LSS)
Fancourt and Steptoe (2018)	UK	Prospective longitudinal study	2004-2005	Adults aged 50 o over living in England	Culture engagement	Culture engagement: going to (1) an art gallery, museum, or exhibition; (2) theatre, a concert, or the opera; (3) the cinema	Passive	NA	10 years	Test of semantic fluency (which is often regarded as a measure of executive function since it involves self-initiated activity, organisation and abstraction, response inhibition and set shifting and calls upon memory and language processes) and an immediate and delayed recall task as a measure of memory
Ho et al. (2019)	Singapore	Cross-sectional study	2016–2017	Community dwelling Singapore residents, who were able to communicate in either English, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, Hokkien or Cantonese. The exclusion criteria were individuals who were visibly too ill or frail to participate or were unable to provide informed consent due to cognitive impairment as assessed by a screening question during recruitment and continuous observation throughout a face-to-face survey interview.	Active art engagement (cultural activities, e.g., creating) and Passive engagement (attending, viewing or listening cultural material)	Music, dance, theatre, literary arts, visual arts, heritage activities, film and handicraft	Both	NA	NA	WHO Quality of Life Instrument (WHOQoL-8); Short Form 20 (SF-20); Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual (FACIT-SP-12); Support Evaluation List Short Form (ISEL-S)
Johnson et al. (2021)	USA	Mixed method approach	June–July 2018	Age 55 and over, living in one of the four affordable housing sites, having sufficient visual and hearing acuity (with assistive devices), and being fluent in English (self-report of fairly well to very well). Exclusion criteria included having a self-reported diagnosis of dementia, a serious medical condition that would interfere with participation in the study, or plans to move out of the area within 6 months.	90 min one a week	Visual art: ceramics intervention; Literature art: creative writing intervention	Active	No activity	12 weeks	Interest in life (National Institutes of Health Toolbox Apathy Scale), Personal growth and Perceived mastery (Psychosocial and Lifestyle Questionnaire), Loneliness (NIH Toolbox Loneliness Scale), General belongingness (General Belongingness Scale), Perceived neighbourhood cohesion (Self-perception of neighbourhood social cohesion)
Noice et al. (2004)	USA	No-RCT	NR	The participants were all in reasonably good health as defined by our criteria (having good vision and hearing, being able to move about the room freely, being able to drive themselves to the training site, and having no health problems that, barring an unforeseen emergency, could prevent their attendance at every session for the entire course).	Nine 90-min sessions	The theater course (acting); Visual arts course: speculating on the intention of the artist	Active	No art activity	4 weeks	Word recall task, Listening span task, Problem solving, Self-esteem scale, Psychological Well-Being Scale
Noice and Noice (2008)	USA	RCT	NR	Being over 65 years of age, possessing sufficiently good vision (with or without glasses) to read instructional materials that were printed in very large bold type (20 pt.), and being able to move about the training area (although approximately half of the participants used canes, walkers, wheelchairs, or motorised chairs)	Twice-weekly, 1-h classes	Multi-modal approach: mental-physical-emotional exercises similar to those given to beginning acting students in college and university theatre programmes. Homework consisted of watching or listening to professional performers (actors or singers) on TV or recordings.	Active	No activity	4 weeks	Word list recall, Delayed word list recall, East Boston Memory Test, Category Fluency, Digit Span, Story recall task, Problem Solving
Thomson and Chatterjee (2016)	UK	Cohort study	NR	Older adults without diagnosis of dementia	One session of 30–40 min (one-to-one or small groups)	Museum objects comprising archaeological artefacts (amulets, flint tools, pottery), artwork (engraving plates, prints), geology samples (fossils, rocks, minerals), and zoology specimens (horns, shells, teeth) were selected from university collections on the basis of visual, tactile, and kinaesthetic properties. Facilitator-led, 30 to 40 min sessions handling and discussing museum objects	Passive	NA	Only one session	Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Subjective wellness ad happiness (Visual Analogue Scale)
Tymoszuk et al. (2020)	UK	Prospective longitudinal study	2004-2005 and 2014-2015	English population of people aged greater than or equal to 50 years established in 2002	Culture engagement	Art engagement measured through the number of frequency of visits to (1) cinema, (2) art galleries, exhibition or museums, (3) theatre, concerts, or the opera	Passive	NA	10 years	Pleasure domain of the Control, Autonomy, Self-realisation, Pleasure scale (CASP-19); Dieners’s life satisfaction scale; Self-realisation domain of the CASP-19 and Control/Autonomy domain of a shortened version of the CASP-19