Arts-based Community Interventions for Youth Mental Health
But now to the main matter of this evening, Katherine Boydel. We’re extremely pleased to have Katherine Beddell to talk to us tonight. She’s the founder and director of the world’s first multiddisciplinary arts-based knowledge transition lab at the Black Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales. Um her lab received the Tomtra research and evaluation award from the med mental health service in 2024. She’s a a fellow of this academy of the academy of social sciences and she was the inaugural recipient of the Milner interdisciplinary prize from the Royal Society of New South Wales. So I’m really grateful that Katherine has agreed to talk to us this evening. Thank you. Imagine this. Just two hours a week. The time it takes to watch a movie or attend a dance class can calm your spirits, your mind, and connect you to something bigger. Arts engagement isn’t just a luxury. It’s a lifeline. Listening to music, painting, dancing, or attending a performance. These aren’t just hobbies. They’re proven pathways to mental health and well-being. Prescribed creativity. Yes, it’s real. When doctors prescribe arts programs, GP visits drop by 37% and hospital admissions fall by 27%. For adults over 50, regular visits to cultural venues and reduce the risk of depression by 32% over a decade. And when we create together, singing in choirs, painting in groups, sharing stories, we don’t just make art, we make community, we make mental health. and a growing evidence base shows arts engagement reduces anxiety and depression and supports trauma recovery. In this session, I’m going to tell you a little bit about our artsbased knowledge translation lab that I lead at Black Dog and share a high level overview of the evidence for arts and health. I’d like to describe three studies exemplars that use the arts to address the mental health of young people. And before I get started, I’d just like to acknowledge the bibical clan of the Darwal nation upon whose lands I’m joining you this evening. And I’d really also like to acknowledge the importance of lived experience um throughout all of our research, which is really important to us from the very beginning. And I really wanted to um start with a bit of a story. Um, and it’s all about the importance of arts in our lives and the importance of cultural activities. And this image here is a beautiful photo of the Amalfi Coast. And when I was in primary school, I was sent home from school one day and I was suffering with intense abdominal pain. And I was lying on the sofa in my parents living room and there was this beautiful oil painting of the Amalfi coast and I imagined myself um in that picture listening to the warm wind on my face and hearing the waves lap up against that rocky shore and it really made a difference to my pain level. um I was transformed and transfixed and that memory really held with me and really highlighted to me the the very first experience of thinking about the importance of arts in our lives. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I was recruited to the Black Dog from Toronto, Canada, where I worked at the University of Toronto. And it was really all about my work in knowledge translation and addressing this knowledge to practice gap. And I think it was really about as an academic and as a scholar recognizing that much of our research findings are published in journal publications and in books and presented at scientific presentations. But the problem is that they’re not readily accessible by the people who need to know. Um the clinicians, the policy makers, health consumers, and the general public who will say, you know, we can’t access these publications. If we do, we don’t have time to read them. We don’t understand the language. So, it was really all about thinking how do we as academics share our research in ways that are much more accessible to these stakeholder audience who really need to know um the findings of our research. So really my research in the knowledge translation lab is focused on three key areas. Really wanting to make our knowledge, our research findings more accessible to these populations. So it’s all about generating knowledge. How do we create knowledge using art genres, performative, literary, visual? How do we involve our research participants in using these methods to depict a lived experience of a mental illness? um to share um their experiences of an intervention or even a social context. And then we’re also interested in how do we share our research findings with these audience? How do we disseminate these findings in really digestible main messages? Um and also measure the impact of that. So does it make a difference depending on what our goals or objectives are. if it’s to increase mental health literacy, if it’s to decrease stigma, if it’s to change practice or behavior. And then more recently, we focused on art engagement interventions. So, how might engaging in arts um as a program, as an intervention impact depression or anxiety or trauma or suicide? So, we’ve been really involved in focusing on those areas. So wanted to sort of stress that um we work across the lifespan as you can see in this diagram from the very youngest right um through to older adults. So we focus on a wide age span. Um in my talk this evening I’m going to focus on young people primarily. Um, but I think what I wanted to highlight is in addition to those three key areas, key areas of knowledge, excuse me, creation, knowledge, dissemination, and arts based intervention, we’re really interested in advancing the science um in in the theory and conceptual frameworks. Um, as a sociologist, my work is really grounded in a commitment to advancing theory and method. And I’m particularly interested in developing innovative methodological approaches that are responsive to the complex complexity of lived experience and um really also focus on much participatory research on interdisciplinary collaboration um and really pushing the boundaries in terms of how we conceptualize and investigate the social world. So, as you might imagine, our work involves um working not only with other scholars um but also with clinicians, with art curators, with artists, and with people with lived experience, which is really important. Now, I’d like to talk a little bit about the global evidence base. So, what do we know about the evidence base around bringing the arts and science together? And I think what we’ve seen in the last 5 to seven years is a real burgeoning of research on on the arts and health and what do we know about it. So there’s been um the report from Creative Health um where I responded um a little bit earlier about those very powerful stats about reduction in GP visits and emergency room visits. There’s been the World Health Organization report that synthesized over 3,000 studies from across the globe um that really showed that creative pursuits as I’ve mentioned like painting or um engaging in art viewing or singing or dancing has a positive impact on our physical and mental health. And I think really importantly as well can lessen social isolation and increase community and uh connection. And we know this is a huge issue more recently. I think um post pandemic we’ve seen that social isolation has been a huge problem and in particular for young people um which kind of goes against the grain of what we might um think. I also wanted to kind of stress that um it’s not only the global evidence base but it’s more local reports um that have really highlighted the arts and health. So there’s been the recent um New South Wales health and the arts framework that again highlights the need to bring the arts and health together in hospitals in clinics in communities. Um there’s been recent um arts creativity and mental well-being policy documents um that highlight some of the research in this space and the more recent um revive document again highlighting So these impacts support a whole of community approach and I think what’s really important is to focus on the social determinance of health and really bring um mental health outside of the formal health system um to incorporate more community-based programs and offerings. So you can see here that um this is just a slide that synthesizes the evidence for the arts in terms of what it does um for the economy and for the education and for the workforce um and really the more social impacts of the arts um on the the health of communities and help on um Australians more broadly. I also wanted to highlight this lovely little book um thinking thoughts um which is a compendium. It was one of the first projects um that was brought together by the Arts and Health Network um where I’ve been very involved um with this network of artists and clinicians and researchers trying to focus on how might we bring the arts and and health together in the state. And um this was really um a project that was asking a wide diverse group of people from young people to older adults about um their experiences of their first personal experience that made them realize that art and culture had some impact on their life. And I shared my first experience on that Amalfi Coast painting and we received over a hundred responses, beautiful little briefs or poems about what made their lives changed or important about engaging with the arts. So this little book um was funded um by New South Wales Health and it went to waiting rooms across the state um in hospitals and in clinics. So just something that in that sort of waiting room, often very anxietyprovoking room, there was a little booklet that people could take up and um could receive these lovely um thoughts from people about the importance of um of arts in their lives in terms of what they can be and what they’ve offered us. Now um as I mentioned, we’re undergoing a real systems change about bringing the arts and health together. And I guess I just like to encourage us to think about a doctor’s prescription that might read take two museum visits and call me in the morning. Well, that might sound strange, but this isn’t just a feelgood story. It’s actually science and it’s been happening um across the globe. I know in the Canadian context, GPS have been funded to to for this very thing um to offer up free museum visits to their clients and this has been measured and shown that it’s had a wonderful impact on their overall mental health and well-being and physical health and well-being. So this evening, I’d just like to share a little bit about how might the right dose of culture be just what the doctor ordered for our collective health and well-being with a particular focus on young people. So I’d like to do this through three study exemplars of the work um that we’ve been engaged in in my lab. So the first one I’d like to share with you is culture dose for kids. Now, we know that anxiety is a pervasive mental health issue that um faces a significant portion of young people worldwide. Uh research consistently indicates very high prevalence rates of anxiety um with estimates ranging from 50 to 20%. And recent studies have shown that these diagnosis have increased substantially within this population. and left untreated. We know that childhood anxiety can have far-reaching and longlasting consequences. So, this program, Culture Dove for Kids, was created with our Art Gallery of New South Wales partners with young people and their parents. And it’s comprised of eight sessions that involve an hour of deep looking at three very carefully cured artworks followed by a morning tea and an opportunity to create themselves in response to the artworks. And what’s really important to note is that um parents themselves also experienced a parallel program viewing the same three artworks but separately and it was based on the actual co-creation was based on the Australian longitudinal study on young people and what we did was identify the key components or key factors that young people worried about and we flipped them to the positive. So for example, worry about climate change became immersion in nature and worry about friendships became connecting with others. So each session focused on a particular theme, things that young people worried about and again flipped to the positive. So the actual program comprised three phases. It was generously funded by the JIF Foundation um and funded us for three years to focus on 9 to 12 year olds with anxiety. Um so our first phase focused on a pilot in the art gallery of New South Wales. Our second phase focused on the deployment of the program in a number of regional art galleries. Um the third phase focused on um young people creating their own digital stories of what it was like to be involved in this program and then we created a toolkit for broader accessibility um of the arts culture dose for kids program itself. So in ter terms of who participated and where you can see that over 500 young people and their parents participated in the program. We had 22 programs that were delivered in 15 galleries across the state and almost 9,000 hours of intervention. Um, we had satisfaction ratings of 9 to 10 out of 10. We had a strong program retention rate. And again, this is really high when you think about research programs that are over an 8-week period of time where we’re expecting our research participant to actually get to a gallery every Saturday morning over eight Saturdays. And to have this kind of ongoing participation was really um was quite unheard of. It was successfully implemented in 15 art galleries and we engaged over 80 mental health and arts professionals. And again I think in terms of capacity building we had these particularly regional galleries and art facilitation um um facilitators engaging in this over a period of time uh was really wonderful to see. Um this is just to indicate kind of the reach of the program um over the galleries um to see that um as the project evolved we found that the running cost decreased um as I mentioned earlier there was really a capacity building program for these regional galleries many of whom um were able to continue the program after the research. So again in terms of thinking about sustainability and building on these positive research findings was really important. So in terms of the outcome we found significantly decreased anxiety in young people. We found improved social connectedness. So a real sense of community. So that when you think about these families and parents coming together, not knowing each other at all, but creating these very strong bonds through participation in the program that lasted following the program. I think what was really important was um evidence of really deepened child care uh parent bonds. Um so what parents um told us was that um they had enhanced connection with their young people. Um that they had something they could talk about throughout the pro throughout the week before they went to the next session so that they could really talk about the engagement they had with these artworks about how they each responded creating their own particular artworks. Um they talked about their artworks sort of being up on the fridge and how that was fodder for discussion and it really supported parent well-being. So parents had an opportunity to connect with each other and share their experiences which was really important and also an unanticipated uh result of the program. Um what I put on this slide were just a little um a little um dose in in a way of some of the parent comments about um their own experience of the program and their observations of their child’s mood. Um so again really supporting some of the quant findings we found. Um so again um very positive comments about the program itself and wanting it to continue on. So now I’d like to move to the second exemplar like that I’d like to share with you and it’s a project that involved um again intergenerational. So again, I focused on young families, um, children and their parents or carers, um, and really focusing on, um, decades of evidence that demonstrate the benefits of time spent in nature for children’s mental health and well-being. and really acknowledging uh the recent research that focuses on uh climate anxiety and children’s mental health and the increasing worry about the multiple intersecting crises in affecting places in planet um global warming warming bio diversity loss and natural disasters. Um and again you can see this was one of the um the items or things that kids worry about and one of the focuses in culture dose of kids of one of the the sessions that focused on immersion and nature and kind of identifying that worry about climate change and just wanted to highlight that in a recent global survey over 80% of young people were worried about climate change and 45% of these young people experience these worries um daily on a daily basis. So, um really wanted to um acknowledge that these emotions can be a helpful place to kind of start building good mental health um in the context of this environmental crisis. And so what we wanted to do was build on these kind of positive experiences to actually acknowledge these climate feelings and emotions. So this particular study was focused on body mapping and a body mapping nature program. So our team of researchers from our lab and a number of different universities focused on exploring these ecological emotions with young families um from the glo government area um of Randick um but we expanded this to uh local areas in Queensland as well. So, we had over a hundred families who lined up to participate in this hands-on activity where we gently prompted our participants to think about their feelings in and about nature. And we found that some of the responses in this very informal setting, as you can see on this slide, it’s a very lovely arkland setting, um, were startling. And we wanted to conduct formal research to understand more about the experience of children and the feasibility of using body mapping as a mode of engagement. So body mapping has a long history in community development and in health promotion and more more recently in our research program um to really share embodied lived experiences through mindful and reflective facilitation that enables our participants to think about their thoughts and feelings um through a very facilitated scaffolding process. So in this particular um project we had people actually collect artifacts um from the neighboring community. So you can see here that you know talking about their experiences of being in nature, about their concerns about the environment and actually using branches and rocks and flowers and ask them to just consider everything from the placement of these these artifacts um to their mental imagery and to share their body maps and their stories describing what it was like to make them and then their experiences that they helped to articulate. Um, so it was wonderful to collect these narratives and stories and through their body maps we were actually able to capture their complicated emotional relationships um with nature. So on the one hand they talked about their joy and relaxation and their awe and peace being in social spaces like the beach or the bush or the park. But on the other hand, they also worried about a range of threats and they talked about deforestation and plastic pollution and coal mining and climate change. And so their collective and interconnected body maps and the range of natural materials, as you can see on these maps, um help to convey this kind of porous relationship between people and place and between positive and distressing emotions which help shape our mental health overall. And in this way, I think the maps enabled new conversations between families. For example, one mother didn’t know her nine-year-old son was aware of deforestation, let alone that he worried about the plight of orangutans in Borneo. And another boy, 7 years old, use bark and soil in his body map to reflect on the language of trees. Um, so I think that these body maps helped offer new vocabularies for all of our participants um in this project. Um so again it was a really important um public awareness project um that actually has informed the development of programs and resources to support young people experiencing climate distress in our work. So I’d like to move now to study three and it’s uh uh called reb bloom which is a beautiful metaphor. Um and it’s a study about how an art installation is changing conversations about self harm. Um, now young people um often experience self harm. Um, and this project is part of our Black Dog Institute federally funded 5-year suicide prevention program where researchers listened to the lived experiences of 27 young women who self harm. And our lab took this research um worked over the course of a year with the researchers, with our knowledge translation team, with art curators, with people with lived experience, with a creative digital team to really um focus on the main messages of the research and the messages that young women wanted others to hear. So what emerged was a very clear message that support doesn’t always need to come from formal interventions that simple everyday gestures can be life-changing. Young women in the study told us that what mattered most were the small human signals eye contact presence and listening without judgment. Um, so what I want to show you here is a little glimpse of the Reed Bloom project, which um, I will show you in a moment, but you’ll see that what we instructed the audience to do or to know is that if you step closer, um, the figure comes alive. Her world begins to emerge. Movements and presence shape her environments. light, color, sound, and her world responding to the subtle ways people interact. So, it was intended to help people grasp in a way that you can feel in your body that the simple act of staying with someone can be profoundly supportive. So, at its heart, Reboo reflects what lies at the center of so many health and mental health journeys, care, presence, and the quiet power of human connection. So the research showed that young women who self harm most often first turn to family and friends, not professionals. So the message is that you don’t need formal psychology training to help. Listen without judgment and responding with compassion can make a big difference. Um so I’m going to give you a little glimpse of this um uh this installation which currently is in the Chhatzwood Westfield in North Sydney. Um it’s been there for the month. Um and really the purpose was to invite all tenants and shoppers in this shopping center to engage with the installation. Um to chat with um with our research team and with the artists who are sort of hanging out doing observations. Um there’s beautiful brochure with the me the main messages from the research that people can take away um and really enter in discussions about a very difficult topic. see that reboom was an LED um engaging immersive um installation and it invites pass through by to engage um so that as people walk by or stop to watch the installation shifts. So light patterns change, colors evolve, sounds respond. So the experience mirrors that quiet but powerful impact of human connection, something central to many mental health journeys. So you can see that Reblum moves findings into public life, inspiring connection, and the hope is that we’ll reduce stigma. So um it’s about moving research off the page and into the world. Um showing how art and technology can spark the kind of empathy that research alone cannot. Um and you can see in the previous um short video that we we workshopped um the main messages and the findings and in order to create reloom really working with words and metaphors and exploring color and sound and seasons and movement. Um we had dancers and choreographers who attempted to embody the research um in movement and created a score that was ready for motion capture. And really the final layer came from Zebra, one of Australia’s most innovative immersive text uh studios and they conceived this in interactive technology that transformed the choreography and the work into a responsive digital environment. Now, we’ve taken uh over the last three weeks observational notes, which has been really interesting because what we’ve seen is young boys specifically have really um engaged with the installation. They’ve been involved in break dancing and moving alongside uh the woman um the figure in the um installation. Um we’ve been able to engage and be able to talk about the research and some of the main findings. Um we have a QR code at the site which links to a survey where we’re using a conceptual framework um called the think field do framework which corresponds with the cognitive effective and behavioral outcomes of the installation viewing. So we really are interested in what do people think? Does it enhance their mental health literacy? What do they feel like? What’s that visceral feeling from engaging? And then what might they intend to do do and change in terms of um behavior. So um in terms of our findings so far um from the survey that people have completed um here’s just a bit of a screenshot of a word cloud in terms of what people thought. Um so you can see sort of they they seem to um feel that it was quite understood that it was powerful. They really connected with that talking and reaching out. Um some of the responses are um the reminder that we all we really need or want is connection. Um the power of physical interaction to evoke emotion and thought. It can be hidden in plain sight. Um that talking can help. um that it can affect every type of person in terms of what people felt. Um again a word cloud um connection and joy and hope um physical sensations were common like goosebumps, butterflies, thrills. And then in terms of outcomes, what people intended to do. Um we got quotes like it reminded me to look out for people. Um, another respondent, I particularly like the message of staying with them. When you stepped away from the person, she stops and you feel guilty and you want to go back and be closer to her. Uh, another um another participant said, “Talk about it. It’s not taboo.” So just in terms of some reflections, I think the three exemplars that I provided just provide a small glimpse into some of the work um that we’ve done and how the the involvement with the arts can help us to engage with and support young people. Um I think that here art surfaced and captured diverse experience to generate rich research data. Um, it was used to share research knowledge to diverse audiences and significantly increased well-being of young people and their parents who engaged with it. The arts based approaches enabled us to engage a broad spectrum of young people with different lived experiences, cultural and social economic backgrounds and mental health histories. I think that these exemplars demonstrate that the arts and creativity are engaging, acceptable, feasible, effective, and most importantly enjoyable. As we’ve seen with the culture dose for kids program, self-expression and creativity foster overall mental health and well-being, not only in young people with anxiety, but also their parents. The echo body mapping surface difficult to articulate experiences and supported safe sharing among young people, their caregivers, and their peers, and connections to self, others, and community are enriched as a result of participating in programs that focus on creative expression. And in the relum exhibit, we see that we can engage a diverse audience in discussing difficult to talk about subjects such as self harm. I think also engaging young people with the arts at the very start of the project development process helps us ensure it’ll be relevant and safe for the cohort it seeks to service and support. In summary, our research has demonstrated that arts engagement offer young people a a non-verbal creative outlet to explore and express complex emotions and provides a safe space for emotional release, reflection, and regulation. Especially valuable for those who struggle to articulate their feelings through words. It helps young people explore their identities, values, and beliefs. It offers a sense of agency and self-worth, empowering young people to tell their stories and see themselves as creators. We’ve seen that arts engagement can be a powerful tool for inclusion, which I think is really important. And the good news is that it’s being increasingly recognized by policy and decision makers as witness in the rise of social prescription in Australia and with the focus on exploring a framework for the arts and health that will take us into the future. Thank you. Thank you very much, Katherine, for the most interesting and thought-provoking talk which I’m sure has opened our eyes to the new therapies available for for mental illness. And congratulations also on winning the the Milner interdisciplinary award of the society. Um, I noticed that Jessica Milner Davis, who’s the the donor of this prize, is in the in the audience this evening, and I hope she’s enjoyed the I think we’ve got uh a number of uh questions. May I may start off with one. Can you just tell us of some of the challenges challenges you faced in bringing arts based approaches into health care or community settings? And in answering this is are there difficulties in sort of generating the funding to to pursue such avenues. Yeah, fantastic question. Thank you very much. And yes, great honor to be the inaugural recipient. I’m very privileged and um it’s made it more meaningful because Jessica’s had the opportunity to share some of the wonderful history of her family. So I feel very honored to be the recipient. So thank you so much for that. Um yeah, absolutely fantastic question. Um I would have to say that it’s it is challenging because I think with a lot of the the health care funders um there’s there’s a a way of knowing and a particular expectation around the type of health research that is expected and when you kind of bring the the arts or more innovative creative methods into the mix I think it’s a bit of a harder cell. Um, so often what we do is really highlight the rigor of the research because I think that’s really important. Um, often I think there’s a there’s kind of a a a thought that it’s, you know, the the nice to have, not the need to have that the arts are a little fluffier. Um and and I think what we always want to do is really ground it in very strong rigorous research underpinnings um in terms of selling the importance in terms of impact. Um I think more in more recent years I think it’s become a little bit more um palatable if you will with the whole social prescribing and the sort of the the focus on a a very um I guess whole of person approach so that when you’re thinking about a specific health care issue or mental health issue um there’s a there’s a recognition that we do need to look beyond the formal mental health and health system to other community resources that might help people in their daily lives. So, for example, if you go to a mental health clinic because you’re depressed, but you’re depressed because your financial situation is out of hand, then no amount of psychotherapy or psychological treatment is going to help that issue, but it’s what in the community could support that issue. Or if you’re lonely, um, meds aren’t going to help that issue, but it’s connect it’s that kind of social connectedness. So I think it’s it’s moving in the right direction but it is a little challenging. I know that within the sort of the healthc care funding body I think mental health itself um within the whole health realm is kind of sometimes referred to as the orphan doesn’t get the share of the funds. So definitely is challenging and I think it does relate to one of the other questions about um I think that I saw come through about the funding um national or state government funding to continue. Yes, we do have funding from New South Wales Health um to do a lot of work with young people in schools using artsbased methods particularly around climate distress and climate change. Um but I would say the lion share of the funding seems to come from philanthropy or industry partners. um which is wonderful because again um it provides us with the funds to be able to engage in the work and we are constantly putting our proposals into more formal healthcare funding bodies as well but I think it’s a little bit more difficult and challenging indeed u there’s a question from uh a new fellow Chris Public he writes hi Katherine you may recall me as the chair of the ministerial task force partnering arts for health which led to the New South Wales health health and arts framework which you referenced. I’m wondering if you’ve reached out to the Australian theater for young people which has recently been funded by the New South Wales Department of Justice to take their work into juvenile justice centers and to address uh youth mental health problems in that environment. Yes. Uh thank you for that question Chris and I absolutely remember you from I guess it’s almost a decade ago now um from from those task force days. So, thank you for the question and absolutely we’ve worked with the um uh the ATYP group. I guess it was a couple of years ago. Um we worked with them and young people and they together crafted a piece that was focused on suicide prevention um based on some research that we did together. It was a knowledge translation project and they created a beautiful performative piece that was translated into a film and that film has gone out to I think they have a a channel um where they go into all kinds of schools to share main messages from young people around their experiences of suicide and self harm. So it was great working with them and their group and young people were involved in the research from the outset. So we’re really involved in sharing their experiences and then co-creating this performative piece uh with the research underpinning. So absolutely and it’s wonderful to hear that they’ve been funded by the Department of Justice to continue on with the wonderful work that they’re doing. Katherine, there’s a question from Jessica Milner Davis. Any any ideas from the research results about timing issues that is the length of participation engagement and the length of uh impact on of effect? Are you equally interested in individual and personal programs uh in intervention as in public offerings like the wonderful Chhatzwood exhibit that you uh reported on? Yeah, thanks thanks Jessica. I’m really delighted that you uh joined in this evening. Um yeah, I mean absolutely the the whole notion of the timing pieces I think is really significant. For example, with the culture dose for kids program that involved the art gallery of New South Wales because it was a research study. It was an eight session program. However, at the end of the program, you’ve got these 20 families who want to continue on. They want to continue and and the research kind of ends. We’ve got our findings and what happened is the art gallery actually used the findings of the study to advocate for continuing the program on within the gallery. So now it’s a bonafide program at the gallery and that group of families that was involved in the research have now become an alumni group that continue to interact with each other and with the gallery and with the program. Um, so I guess for me it sort of speaks to that temporal aspect of, you know, when you’re involved in a study and then it ends. And I think that’s one of the challenges of being involved in this very embodied work where people are very involved in the research in a very different way than completing a survey or an interview because they’re very much creating and involved with each other and collaborative kind of work that when the research ends it’s it’s like sort of it’s like a sad event. there’s a lot and people want to continue together. Um, so I think that’s a really important ethical issue as well about being involved in research that is so participatory and so engaging and how do we um how do we think about continuity or how to deal with when the program ends sort of after the you know after the sort of it’s almost like the movie when the credits are gone then what happens and that kind of thing. Um and yes definitely equally interested in individual and personal programs um as well as that kind of public space as well. So it kind of runs when I think about our our projects they run you know everything from sort of the more personal individual to group to more community general public large events where we’re really trying to target that more that more general public and a lot of it is around dstigmatizing conversations about mental health issues that are often difficult to talk about but to do it in a more community setting around around the arts which become another way I think to share their experiences that where words often are woefully inadequate to express um those kinds of feelings. Um and we found that it’s sort of a more comfortable safe venue to be able to have those conversations. There’s another question from Crystal. You you may have alluded to the answer already commenting there’s great work and uh do you have either national or state government funding to continue? I think you might have answered it but anything more you’d like to elaborate? Um I guess I guess one thing is about the um the industry partnerships. So corporations, so corporates who are interested in the mental health and well-being of their tenants, of their staff, of their workforce, and are kind of seeing the recent burgeoning of evidence that engaging in the arts, whether it’s uh as viewing arts in or or creating, um has an impact on our mental health and well-being and sense of community and sense of social inclusion and wanting to partner to have these kinds of programs and interventions in their for example shopping centers and office buildings and office building lobbies. And so thinking about ways that we can offer up this kind of work in terms of workshopping it and create a funding stream so that we can support our our lab. Actually um we have lots of um research grants sort of under review at the moment. So fingers crossed that we’ll get that national funding that we really need to continue the work. Um we have a a global consortium um of scholars uh using body mapping. Um, so I’m really keen to I guess expand this work more internationally because there’s a huge group particularly with the globe in the global south I think which is um traditionally been more invisible in terms of of the work the work that’s done there. So um yeah um hopefully we’ll get that kind of funding that we want to continue our work but it’s always you know it’s always a challenge kind of going from grant to grant to grant it’s a it’s a horrendous activity isn’t it the work you’ve spoken of uh it’s mainly with children and young adults and I was wondering h have you engaged adults in this style of therapy and if so what differences are there between um the way children and adults respond to artsbased mental health programs. Yeah, great question. Um, yeah, as I indicated on that one slide where I had the little one-year-old who was engaging with the body maps. Um, we really do cover the entire age span. So, we’ve done a lot of work with older adults um, in aged care um, where we’ve used different art space methods to identify brilliance in age care. So, what is sort of exemplary care? What does that look like? what are its constituents? And having um people in age care facilities use different art forms to express the kinds of care that they felt was exemplary um as kind of a model. And um what we did was we had people come to discuss their experiences of brilliant care or excellence or best practice in care. Um, and we asked them to bring a found object or a material object to the interview and it was amazing the objects that they brought that kind of inspired this discussion about what care meant to them. And then we had one of our artists and residents took all of all these found objects and created this beautiful installation that then was installed in Westmeat Hospital. Um so again to kind of share findings with with people who are caring for older adults. These are the things that are important. These are the components that really make a difference um for these older adults. Um so yes we cover kind of the entire age range. Very interested also in intergenerational so having younger and older adults work together. Um but also to your question about the differences. I guess the one thing I would say um with adults in compared to younger people there’s a bit more slightly more reluctance perhaps to sort of engage in the arts because we always kind of create that safe space. We don’t expect you to be an artist at all. It’s kind of that freedom to use symbols or slogans or metaphors to express your experience. And I think with adults, it takes a little bit more time to warm up to that creative process. Whereas with younger people, I guess they’re you more used to doing that. It’s just like, yeah, just right into it in terms of that drawing or painting or sculpture or creating digital stories and that sort of thing. So I guess that would be the the main difference that comes to mind immediately. In all the programs you’ve conducted, are there any reactions or outcomes from the participants that have genuinely surprised you? Um, I guess one of them was the impact on the parents of the young people in the culture dose for kids program because originally it was just focused on the kids with anxiety. And then we thought, well, these kids are 9 to 12 years old. They have to get to the gallery. How are they going to get to the gallery? We’ve got to involve the parents. Then we thought, okay, we’ll run a parallel program for the parents um so that they’re not with their children at the time, but they can also engage in the art, view the same artworks, and then we bring them together at the end. So, we didn’t anticipate um that the impact on the parents would be even greater in terms of reduction in their anxiety. That wasn’t really the focus of the study, but but came up in our interviews with parents and our interactions with parents. Um so, that was a surprise. Um I guess the other surprise to me would be a lot of the work that we’ve done around bringing people together in workshopping was done through the pandemic when we were in isolation and so we had to quickly pivot and facilitate a lot of these workshops online and I’ll tell you this was a you know an ARC funded project and we were really wanting to conduct it the way we had said we And we were really worried how are we going to involve these women with um intersection of disability, mental ill health and refugee background and engage them online in creating these body maps. And so the real surprise for us was that it not only worked but these women created these amazing body maps and had the time between these workshops to work on these body maps. So I guess for us it was advancing the body mapping work that it was not only feasible to do it online but actually worked quite well and created a sense of community even though it was online. So that was a bit of a surprise as well for us. In designing these programs do you co-design them with the participants and the and other actors like artists and curators and participants with lived experience? Absolutely. Absolutely. It goes without saying um we take a very integrated knowledge translation approach. So whoever our research participants are, they’re involved right at the proposal writing stage. We involve them on the on the team. We hire and train them as research assistants. Um they assist with dissemination strategies. Um so they’re involved every step of the way. That’s great. And look, if there I’ll just ask one final question if I may before we wrap up. in in the in programs like culture dose for kids. What do you think contributed most to the success of the program, the creative activities, the social connections or the reflective discussions? Yeah, it’s a great question. I I guess what comes to mind immediately are the art facilitators. They are second to none at this process of slow looking. So if you can imagine 9 to 12 year olds and you’ve got 20 to 22 of them per session, they are they take them to three artworks over the course of an hour and they are so skilled and talented at creating a beautiful space for talking about what they’re seeing and just getting these young people engaged in talking about the artworks. What stands out to them? What what does it remind them of? What does it call up? What colors do they see? They’re just they’re so amazing. I can’t tell you. And even the work with their parents, just that meditative process was amazing. So that was really profound for me. Um and then the morning tea because the morning tea was just beautiful treats for these kids and their parents and again an opportunity for them to connect with each other and that was just like a beautiful process. So it was just yeah it was it was a lovely process and I do have to say it was philanthropically funded um by the JIP Foundation. The funders came to the final eighth session, met the kids and the parents and as a result said to us, look, can you write us a proposal to scale this up in rural and remote communities for kids in these regions. So for us, of course we will. And so they funded us for another couple of years to be able to take it to those other 15 galleries. So that was just a real highlight of the whole process as well. Thank you, Katherine, for a most thought-provoking um conversation. I’ll throw now to Christina Slate, who deliver the formal vote of thanks and close the meeting. Thank you again. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. And that has indeed been quite a passionate uh ride through the work that you’ve done. I’ve really enjoyed it in enormously. I think we at the Royal Society and and we all understand that science and art are deeply interwoven. What I think is unusual is to have scientific evidence of the value of the art. So that’s been a real um a marvelous reinforcement of what is in fact our basic thought in the Royal Society that we need to bring together all of the sciences and arts of being human in order to think about how we can improve our society. I love the the doctor’s prescription take two museum visits. I I think I’ll do that next time too. And I think what I thought was most fascinating was this issue around the being human and how important it is being embodied. I found that really fascinating. We had a um the forum last week on AI, the hope and the hype. And we heard stories about, you know, therapy, AI therapy and AI carers for the aged who in fact the age said they liked better than the real people because they could be rude to them, which was quite a nice line. I think that this notion of being embodied and the role that it it plays in in what is going to be a different world and the ways that art plays that out are really exciting. Many many years ago and I think actually it’s about 30 years ago I was involved in doing philosophy for children in art galleries in New York and in Canberra. As you say, I think I’ve never had such exciting remarks about paintings. You know, we went into the gallery, sat them by the painting, then said a warho’s electric chair, which is pretty confronting. All sorts of questions about identity and so on. It’s a a very interesting space. But I suppose what I’m desperate to hear and I’m feeling reassured by you that is that we can keep scaling and keep this process going. I fear it depends a lot on your own passion and and work. So thank you very much. And I now turn to the audience and close this 1,336th ordinary general meeting of the Royal Society. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
1336th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture of the Royal Society of NSW — 12 November 2025
“Arts-based Community Interventions for Youth Mental Health”
Professor Katherine Boydell FASSA
Professor of Mental Health and
Director, Arts-based Knowledge Translation Lab
Black Dog Institute
https://www.royalsoc.org.au/events/1336th-ogm-and-open-lecture/
The presentation commences at 00:54
Timing Marks:
00:00:00 Introduction: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade FRSN, President, Royal Society of NSW
00:00:54 Presentation: Professor Katherine Boydell
00:33:49 Audience Q&A: Emeritus Professor Lindsay Botten FRSN, Vice-President, Royal Society of NSW
00:52:42 Vote of Thanks: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade
00:55:17 Meeting Close
Summary: The mental health of young people has decreased significantly in recent years, worsened by global challenges like COVID-19 and climate change. In Australia, approximately 40% of 16–24-year-olds are experiencing mental health conditions. One-half of mental disorders begin by age 14, and 75% by age 24. Young people with mental ill-health face increased risks of social exclusion, discrimination, educational challenges, and human rights violations.
Recent policy documents have advocated for a person-centred system that prioritises prevention and early intervention via ‘whole of community’ approaches. This requires diverse, age-appropriate, innovative solutions that extend beyond formal mental health services to include informal support networks and local context. In this vein, there is growing evidence to support community-based social interventions, particularly creative and arts activities. Research shows arts engagement positively impacts self-esteem, confidence, relationship building, and belonging—all linked to resilience and wellbeing. Arts-based interventions offer inclusive, non-stigmatising mental health support.
While traditionally studied in clinical settings, research increasingly demonstrates arts benefits in community contexts. Our arts-based knowledge translation Lab at the Black Dog Institute develops and evaluates creative, community-based responses to youth mental health crises. Art represents an effective research tool across project stages and a direct intervention for young people to alleviate distress and enhance wellbeing through meaning-making, skill-building, and community connection. This presentation will describe, via three exemplars, the use of the arts in mental health research with young people.
Katherine Boydell is the founder and director of the world’s first multidisciplinary Arts-based Knowledge Translation (AKT) Lab, based at the Black Dog Institute, UNSW Sydney, that uses art forms to produce and disseminate knowledge, evaluate its impact and make research accessible beyond academia. Her lab received the Tom Trauer Research and Evaluation award from The Mental Health Service (TheMHS) in 2024. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and the inaugural recipient of the Milner Interdisciplinary prize from the Royal Society of New South Wales. She is Executive Editor of the journal Arts and Health, Editor of British Journal of Psychiatry Open, and Associate Editor of Early Intervention in Psychiatry, and has published more than 300 articles, book chapters and books.