Can a night at the theatre really slow your ageing?
A UCL study links regular trips to galleries, gigs and libraries with slower biological ageing. It doesn’t prove culture keeps you young, but it’s still a decent habit after 50.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 25 October 2026
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There’s a particular kind of man who, somewhere around 52, finds himself standing in front of a Turner on a wet Friday evening and wondering when exactly he became that bloke. Fair enough. It’s not quite the life you pictured at 19, sitting outside a pub with a pint of snakebite. But according to a headline that did the rounds recently, the bloke in front of the Turner may also be ageing more slowly than the one at home on the sofa watching the same Sky Sports replay for the third time.
It’s a nice idea: culture as anti-ageing cream, sold by the National Gallery instead of a reality-TV star. The research behind it is real and worth reading. The headlines are a bit more hopeful than the data.
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What did the study actually find?
The research comes from a team at University College London led by Professor Daisy Fancourt, an epidemiologist who has spent the best part of a decade looking at the arts and health. Published in the journal Innovation in Aging, it used survey answers and blood samples from 3,556 UK adults. The blood was taken between 2010 and 2012.
The researchers compared how often people did arts and cultural things (reading, listening to music, singing, painting, going to museums, galleries and heritage sites) with chemical markers in their DNA. Those markers feed into what scientists call epigenetic clocks, which estimate how fast your body is ageing compared with the number of candles on your cake.
The team ran the numbers on seven of these clocks. The headline result came from the newest, called DunedinPACE. On that measure, people who did an arts activity at least once a week were ageing about 4 per cent more slowly than people who rarely did, and monthly engagement was linked to roughly 3 per cent. The researchers also compared this with physical activity and found an effect of broadly similar size, which explains the excitable coverage suggesting the opera might be as good for you as the gym.
The detail that got less airtime is that some of the clocks showed no benefit at all, for either culture or exercise. The UCL team pointed out that this matches earlier studies, which also found no link between those particular clocks and physical activity. It doesn’t make the result worthless. It does mean that a 4 per cent slowdown on one measure is not the same as gaining four years of life.
Does going to museums actually make you age more slowly?
Honest answer: we don’t know, and this study can’t tell us. It is observational. It spotted a pattern in a large group of people at one point in time. It didn’t send half of them to the Tate and lock the other half in a Travelodge to see what happened.
That matters because the people who go to galleries every week are not a random slice of Britain. On average they tend to have more money, more free time, better health to begin with, and fewer jobs that wreck their backs. Researchers try to adjust for things like this, but in a study of this kind you can only adjust for what you’ve measured. There is also the obvious question of which way round it works. A man whose knees, energy and bank balance are in decent shape is more likely to get the train into town for an exhibition. Maybe he isn’t healthy because he goes to galleries. Maybe he goes to galleries because he’s healthy.
Epigenetic clocks are also research tools, not a diagnosis. No GP is going to measure your DunedinPACE score, and the ones sold online are, at best, an expensive way of finding out something you can’t act on.
Treat the theatre like the allotment: not a fountain of youth, just a habit that tends to make the years better.
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So why bother with culture after 50?
Because the boring, well-proven reasons are still good ones. NHS guidance on healthy ageing isn’t a secret. Keep moving (adults are advised to aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, plus strength work on two days), keep your mind busy and stay in touch with other people. The NHS’s five steps to mental wellbeing include connecting with others, learning new skills and paying attention to the present moment. A choir, a book group or a season ticket at the local rep theatre ticks all three without anyone having to buy Lycra.
Think about what a gallery visit actually involves. You walk, often more than you’d expect. You stand up for a couple of hours. You look properly at something, which most of us haven’t done since our phones took over. And you usually go with someone, then argue about it over a drink afterwards. None of this needs epigenetics to justify it.
It’s also not some niche activity for retired headmasters. DCMS’s Participation Survey suggests about nine in ten adults in England engaged with the arts in person over the past year, though that definition is broad enough to include a works panto. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland measure cultural participation separately, so the figures don’t line up neatly. The useful question isn’t whether you ever engage with culture. It’s whether you do it often enough to count as a habit.
How do you make it a habit without the wellness nonsense?
Start with what’s free. General admission to the National Gallery costs nothing. It’s open daily, until 9pm on Fridays, and charges only for some temporary exhibitions. Most of the big national museums across the UK work the same way. Library membership is free too, and a library is a museum, a reading room and an events listing all in one. Many run talks, local history groups and reading groups that rely on people over 50 to keep going.
Then book something on purpose. The Royal Albert Hall, open since 1871 and home to the Proms since 1941, shows that the big night out doesn’t have to be a stadium gig where you watch the band on a screen the size of a semi-detached house. But the study’s message, if it has one, is about frequency, not grandeur. A monthly trip to the local theatre, a weekly choir rehearsal in a church hall or a standing date with a mate to see whatever’s on at the independent cinema probably does more than one expensive weekend in the West End each year.
Finally, don’t keep score. Once culture becomes another thing to optimise, alongside your step count and your sleep score, it stops being any fun. You’re allowed to go and see a play just because you want to see it.
In short
A UCL study of 3,556 UK adults found that people who did arts and cultural activities weekly showed a slightly slower pace of biological ageing on one epigenetic clock, but several other clocks showed no effect. It shows a link, not proof that museums or theatre slow ageing, because healthier and wealthier people may simply go out more. Still, regular culture fits well with NHS advice on healthy ageing: keep moving, keep learning and stay connected. So go because it’s good for you and you’ll enjoy it, not because it promises to make you younger.
Andy Irwin writes about the way we live now for men 45 and over: work, relationships, mental health, getting older, and the trends and debates that land on men in the middle of life. With the facts, a dry sense of humour, and no lectures.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to andy@midcent.uk.
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