Lunchtime Webinar Series 2024

‍Nurturing creative participation

A live webinar series about the benefits of nurturing creative participation for children, those with complex disabilities, First Nations communities, performers, and the overall health and functioning of our society.
Fridays, 12-1pm in November and December 2024.
About the sessions
About the presenters

8 November: Polyglot Theatre and "When the World Turns"
Cat Sewell & Sue Giles
Polyglot Theatre’s Cat Sewell and ASSITEJ International President Sue Giles AM in conversation: how does the impact of the arts play out when children are involved?  These play and participation experts use the sensory world of the immersive performance When the World Turns (a fantastical experience for young people with complex disability and their families or educators) to spark a discussion on art and its intrinsic value as well as social, health and educational impact, the explosion of discovery when working in collaboration with children and some classic failures that became turning points.


22 November: "What does an arts and health organisation do?" - GAHA report
‍Tully Barnett & Alexander Cothren
In this session, we will discuss findings from our recently launched report, What does an arts and health organisation do? For this report, we interviewed 30 members of arts and health organisations across 13 countries. We asked them about the different roles arts and health organisations play: how they got started, what they saw as the key ingredients to their success, and the challenges they faced while undertaking the work. Some of our key findings are particularly pertinent to Australia, including the importance of having a national arts and health hub, and the challenges around ensuring diversity in the arts and health workforce.

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29 November: Optimising musicians' performance through virtual reality
‍Solange Glasser & Margaret Osborne
Our project explores the use of a simulated performance environment in virtual reality (VR) to increase student engagement and wellbeing, enhance learning outcomes, and provide equitable learning opportunities. During this presentation we will discuss a performance intervention that was delivered in 2023 via VR for students across two music performance subjects to down-regulate performance anxiety and improve focus and resilience, representing a fundamental innovation in curriculum delivery beyond the traditional dichotomy of face-to-face and online learning. While we have chosen to deeply understand the experiences of music performance students, our research has the potential to inform wellbeing interventions in broader performance contexts.

6 December: Health promotion for First Nations communities through applied theatre
Kamarra Bell-Wykes & Sarah Woodland
The Score is a participatory model for sexual health education and promotion aimed at young people in First Nations communities in Australia. The model brings Indigenous knowledges and cultural practices into conversation with applied and educational theatre to facilitate a creative, culturally safe, stigma free space for exploring sexual health and healthy relationships. An update to the CAWRI lunchtime webinar in 2022, Kamarra and Sarah will share the outcomes from The Score, which was produced by ILBIJERRI Theatre Company and delivered in communities over 2022-2023.‍

Cat Sewell is the Artistic Director and CoCEO of Polyglot Theatre, a world-renowned contemporary theatre company based in Melbourne/Naarm making exceptional arts experiences for children and families. Over the last 20 years, Cat has worked at the intersection of the arts, health and education fields, with play and creativity at the core of her practice.
Sue Giles AM is an award winning director specialising in the creation of immersive worlds for and with children as leaders in their experience. Sue is an international advocate for the rights of the child to access art and culture. She authored Young People and the Arts: Agenda for Change (currency press) and was made AM for her services to children’s theatre.

Tully Barnett is Associate Professor in Creative Industries and Director of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University. Her teaching and research focus on cultural policy, cultural value and evaluation as well as digital cultural heritage studies. She is co-author of What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (2018) and founding member of Reset Arts and Culture.
Alex Cothren is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Flinders University. He is a winner of the Carmel Bird, William van Dyke, Griffith Review Emerging Voices and Peter Carey Awards for short fiction. His research spans the areas of arts and health, climate fiction and contemporary satire. He has co-authored the reports, Telling the story of arts and health in South Australia (2022) and What does an arts and health organization do? (2024)

Solange Glasser is a Senior Lecturer in Music Psychology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. Her research spans multisensory perception, synaesthesia, and absolute pitch in musical development. Current projects focus on immersive realities, digital ethics, and AI. She holds degrees from France and Australia.
Margaret Osborne is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Music at the University of Melbourne and past President of the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare. She has over 20 years' experience as a performance psychologist. Notable for research on music performance anxiety, she enhances musicians' health and performance via self-regulated learning and emotional regulation.

Kamarra Bell-Wykes is an award-winning First Nations playwright, theatre maker, and education consultant. Her transformative practice delivers innovative research, resources and acclaimed performances across the performing arts, community, health, education and justice sectors. In 2021, Kamara received the Patrick White Playwrights Award for her work Whose Gonna Love ‘Em? I am that I AM. She is Co-Artistic Director of acclaimed theatre collective A Daylight Connection (Chase).
Sarah Woodland is a researcher, practitioner, and educator in applied theatre, participatory arts, and socially engaged performance. She is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts and has published widely, including her most recent open access book, co-authored with Kamarra Bell Wykes, First Nations Theatre for Health Equity: Healing Stories (2024, Springer).