Culture Change in Motion: creative approaches to working with trauma

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The Big Anxiety is one of the world’s largest festivals of arts and mental health, bringing together arts and health experts to advance trauma-informed and lived experience-led approaches to mental health. Underpinned by the Big Anxiety Research Centre at University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (UNSW), it uses innovative creative media and collaborative arts practice to develop new ways to provide psychosocial support for trauma, emotional distress and suicidality.

The session will introduce the key principles and methods of The Big Anxiety, highlighting a range of ‘experiential’ programs, and immersive media environments, created in partnership with communities. These range from Edge of the Present, a world-first virtual reality environment for suicide prevention, to Waumananyi, a VR artwork created by Anangu artists in the Central Desert of Australia for use in remote communities looking to break the cycles of trauma.

Professor Jill Bennet
Scientia Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at UNSW; Director of The Big Anxiety Research Centre [BARC], and founding Director of The Big Anxiety festival.

Dr Caroline Lenette
Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at UNSW and Deputy Director BARC.

Dr Maree Higgins
Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and an Associate of BARC at UNSW

Part of the seminar series, The Spaces Between: Equity, Voice, Agency and Care Practices Involving the Arts and Arts Therapies

Photo by Kaz Madigan