CREATE Online Conference #2

How to walk through the walls: reimagining health and healthcare through the arts

In this online conference we discuss how the transformative potential of the arts can be harnessed in health services. As healthcare costs rise and navigating healthcare systems become increasingly complex, we explore how the arts can catalyse system change in health services and produce significant benefits, not only for patients, but also for service providers.

The topic for this online conference arises from the vast body of recent evidence showing that culture is a crucial determinant of health. This is apparent from Aboriginal art centres to coping with COVID-19 anxiety and isolation with live-streamed performances, spoofs of Old Masters paintings using household objects and family-dancing on TikTok. This online conference takes this evidence one step further and asks how making the arts central to health, could let us reimagine health services. A system-wide perspective on arts and well-being will be used to explore how health services can be transformed by creative activity to support healing as well as treatment; how services and the people who work in them, can gain satisfaction and resilience; and how creative activity can return both health and care to the community. Featuring:
Michael Hodgins, UNSW
Emma O’Brien OAM, Director of Music Therapy at Royal Melbourne Hospital
Vic McEwan, Artistic Director, The Cad Factory
Ngala Nanga Mai pARenT Program