Self‐esteem is regarded as vital to children's social and cognitive development and emotional well‐being. Arts engagement may well be important in supporting children's self-esteem. To date, new research was conducted by Hei Wan Mak and Daisy Fancourt analyzing data from 6,209 children from the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study with the aim to identify a positive correlation between arts engagement in children and their self-esteem.
The study results showed that initiatives to promote arts engagement in children may provide a practical and efficient way to improve children's self-esteem. The researchers reported that “children who participated in arts activities most days were significantly more likely to have higher levels of self-esteem than those who participated less often”. For some activities like reading, music-making or listening the involvement of parents was crucial for the boost in self-esteem. In some other activities like painting and drawing, however, the involvement of parents didn’t have significant impact on children’s self-esteem. An important finding from the study showed that creative work such as paintings or drawings, may help people feel unique and thus foster one's self-esteem. To conclude, it is not necessary for children to be good at arts to boost their self-esteem, as the researchers’ state: "Engagement, not ability, seems to be the key".