Facilitating environments: An arts-based psychosocial design approach

Abstract

This two-part chapter examines the practice of arts-based psychosocial design in relation to the creation of a facilitating space. It focuses on two projects delivered as part of The Big Anxiety festival: Awkward Conversations (Sydney 2017, 2019; Queensland 2019, 2022), in which one-to-one conversations about mental health were offered in experimental
aesthetic formats; and Parragirls Past, Present (Sydney 2017), a reparative project culminating in an immersive film production that explores the enduring effects of institutional abuse and the ways in which traumatic experiences can be re-figured to transform their emotional resonance and meaning. Bringing psychosocial theory into dialogue with an arts-based inquiry into lived experience, these two projects examine the imbrication of lived experience and social settings and the potential for evolving strategies for supporting mental health and emotional well-being.

Bennett, J., Froggett, L., Muller, L (2022) Facilitating environments: An arts-based psychosocial design approach in ed. J. Bennett, The Big Anxiety: Taking Care of Mental Health in Times of Crisis. London: Bloomsbury pp 93-111