Creativity and Wellbeing

The link between creativity and wellbeing has been suggested for generations, but not well understood. Focusing on how creativity can help us to live happier and healthier the Creativity and Wellbeing Hallmark Research Initiative facilitated cross disciplinary research between fields of health, ageing, community, arts, technology and environment.

Outcomes

The Creativity and Wellbeing Hallmark Research Initiative (CAWRI) called for and funded twenty multi-disciplinary projects which conducted research between 2019 and 2023. This period included the COVID-19 years which required many projects to reimagine their methods and approaches due to lockdowns and other government measures, leading to novel lines of enquiry and outcomes. Projects involved researchers at all career levels and CAWRI also provided fourteen graduate researchers with funding to extend their investigations into new areas, strengthening the evidence base supporting their theses.

Research was translated in a range of forums, from traditional academic publications and conference presentations to public facing websites, blogs, webinars, podcasts and media interviews.

CAWRI’s newsletter subscriber base ensured a strong online and in-person audience attended its capstone conference Performing Creativity, Culture and Wellbeing. Convened in February 2023 and involving both international and national speakers, including Christopher Bailey, Arts and Health Lead for the World Health Organisation, the conference was also the forum that Creative Australia (then the Australia Council for the Arts) chose to launch Connected Lives: Creative solutions to the mental health crisis a report that parallels the Federal Government’s new National Culture Policy.

CAWRI has positioned itself as a key player in the rapidly growing Creativity and Wellbeing arena, fostering an appetite for evidence-based solutions amongst those considering how creativity can best be employed to improve the wellbeing of diverse populations across the globe.

Funded Projects (with disciplinary contributions; linked to final reports where available)

• Creative Care and Play in Residential Aged Care: An Evaluation of the “Tovertafel” (Computing and Information Systems, Performing Arts)
• Communities over the airwaves: how the creativity of community language radio promotes wellbeing among new and emerging migrant communities in Australia (Linguistics, Culture and Communication, Psychology)
• Community wellbeing and playgrounds: enhancing community wellbeing through an intergenerational playground (Construction Design, Cultural Studies, Creative Arts)
• Community Radio: Restarting the Beating Heart of Melbourne’s Music Scene (Business and Economics, Culture and Communication)
• Embodying resistance and survival: How drama and youth theatre can respond to eco-anxiety and support recovery in disaster affected communities (Performing Arts, Culture and Communication, Education)
• Feral pedagogies: Exploring how queer performance builds queer community, resilience and wellbeing (Performing Arts, Queer Studies, Theatre Studies, Health Sciences)
• Finding Refuge: art, emergency and "imagining the unimaginable" in the resilient city (Culture and Communication, Urban Policy Studies, Sustainable Environments)
• Fostering youth wellbeing using music (Music Therapy, Health Services)
• Imagination in community health practice – Creating Wellbeing (Positive Psychology, Education)
• International students creating comedy to foster wellbeing: 'Are you joking?' (Education, Health Sciences, Linguistics)
• Healthy people, healthy Country and healthy art careers: Understanding creativity and cultural identities in new Indigenous artistic practices and industries (Indigenous Studies, Fine Arts, Education)
• Left, Write, Hook: The efficacy of writing and boxing in assisting survivors of sexual trauma in moving towards post traumatic growth (Arts Therapy, Health Sciences)
• Mental Dance (Performing Arts, Health Sciences)
• Stomach ache: an arts-led exploration of the gastrointestinal system (Fine Arts, Health Sciences)
• The Compassionate Performer: Development and pilot of a digital self-compassion resource for the well-being of performance artists (Health Sciences, Performing Arts, Psychology)
• The Othello theatre in education project: Fostering creativity and wellbeing in the face of high levels of violence against women (Education, Theatre Studies)
• The post-COVID workplace: are (unhealthy) offices at risk of extinction? (Architecture, Sustainable Environments)
• This is me: Exploring how shared music expression with peers can support psychological wellbeing in autistic young adults (Music Therapy, Culture and Communication, Psychology)
• Through their lenses: Creativity, wellbeing and women's experiences of ageing (Global Health, Medicine, Fine Arts)
• Varieties of Imagination, Creativity, and Wellbeing in Australia (VICAW) (Culture and Communication, Disability Studies, History, Indigenous Knowledge, Performing Arts)

Networks and partnerships

With an emphasis on applied research, almost all funded projects worked with industry or community partners ranging from aged care providers to theatrical organisations to a neighbourhood house. In addition, many projects involved researchers from other Australian universities, forging new relationships and networks and strengthening existing ones.

At a more overarching level, the relationship CAWRI established with Creative Australia is probably the most consequential and far reaching. CAWRI formalised and consolidated a strong connection with the then Australia Council for the Arts (AC) in 2021. Collaborations with the AC, the Commonwealth Government’s Office for the Arts, the Creative Economy Taskforce, the amongst others culminated in a streamed public Arts and Wellbeing Forum in November 2021 hosted at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne.

Together with key researchers Jill Bennett from Big Anxiety Research Centre (UNSW), Claire Hooker from the CREATE Centre (University of Sydney) and Katherine Boydell from Black Dog Institute and the Australia Council, Jane Davidson, as CAWRI Chair, co-authored a discussion paper on pre-identified areas for consideration,  Arts, Creativity and Mental Wellbeing: Research, practice and lived experience, Australia Council for the Arts, 2022. This informed a series of AC-led discussions involving various interest groups which ran throughout 2022. These discussions ran in parallel to work the Federal Government was doing which culminated in announcement of the National Culture Policy Revive and establishing the AC’s new direction and being re-named Creative Australia in January 2023. CAWRI’s important role nationally makes it well-placed to continue to influence the way in which wellbeing-oriented policy involving the creative arts is designed and implemented.

Future directions

Now a research priority of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, CAWRI continues to facilitate creativity and wellbeing research focusing particularly on the creative and performing arts.