AHNNA has had its final meeting for 2024. We had the opportunity to look back over a very satisfying year.
Our first meeting, in person after such a long time, brought us into connection with a lot of new artists and colleagues, some of whom have become valued new members.
We participated in ‘tastes’ of some of the arts practices that our extraordinary community has developed and nurtured over the years, and we dreamed of the kinds of futures in which our work and our communities could flourish.
Shortly after, AHNNA and the CREATE Centre co-presented a special panel discussion on the Art of Good Health and Wellbeing with renowned playwright and festival director Wesley Enoch and Centre for Arts and Social Transformation director, former Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh. You can watch the recording here.
This was followed by the Create Centre’s conference Fostering Creative Education, and AHNNA Secretary Gail Kenning also led the Big Anxiety Research Centre conference Big Trauma, Big Change. CREATE will host a second conference in March 2025 so keep your eye out for this one!
In April, the Creativity and Wellbeing Research Initiative held their second annual Fostering Creative Health Conference in Melbourne, bringing together artists and researchers to explore contemporary issues from social prescribing to community-led health promotion.
In May, AHNNA members decided to pursue three projects in 2024: a mini mentorships program for socially engaged artists; a project to create and raise profiles for AHNNA members, and a creative exchange for practitioners to share and experience their ways of working.
In June, there were many many attendees at ASPIRE’s Environment, Activity, Connection, Health social prescribing conference, now an annual event typically headlined by the wonderful Prof Genevieve Dingle at the University of Queensland and AHNNA’s shining light of a Vice President Prof Katherine Boydell at the Black Dog Institute. AHNNA members connected with the many arts and health activities fostered at SPHERE and at Black Dog shared so many new studies and initiatives including the wonderful ‘Culture Dose’ and Culture Dose for Kidsprograms.
In August, Prof Dingle joined AHNNA President Claire Hooker in a CREATE Centre webinar to discuss social prescribing – a must watch for anyone who still feels put off but the medicalised language of prescription.
In September, the AHNNA / Cadfactory mini mentorships program ran to huge success, reflecting the Cadfactory’s increasing sector leadership in developing socially engaged arts practice, also evident in its Artistic Director Dr Vic McEwan – a founding AHNNA member – graduating with his multi prize winning PhD awarded for work undertaken at the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic. Some AHNNA members including sector leading dance artist Diane Busuttil were also part of the Creative Aging symposium at the University of Newcastle led by Helen English and QUT’s indefatigable Professor Evonne Miller.
October saw the kick off of the world’s first health promotion campaign for arts and health led by Dr Christina Davies (Good Arts, Good Mental Health), with banner ads at the footy and the Prime Minister joining in.
In November, AHNNA was part of a successful bid to create a new HArts of Care node at the Sydney Policy Lab with an agenda to grow impacts on policy in arts and health along with new collaborations through 2025. There is also a lot of advocacy to do: the CREATE Centre led a successful pushback against NESA’s attempt to remove performance from HSC assessment while arts and music therapists and (with less media attention but no less importance) play therapists have pushed back against new limitations to accessing these activities through the NDIS. And the importance of advocating for better working conditions for artists, starting with secured basic income, has never been more important. I wrote this on December 18, linking to the Arts Wellbeing Collective Initiative from Art Centre Melbourne. And today 19 December, the staff have been informed that the Initiative will close effective December 31. Go check out the resources on the webpage while you have the chance.
And AHNNA finished the year with a date set for its AGM: February 10 2025. Mark your calendars and watch for the registration!
So what can you look forward to in 2025?
Creative Exchange! Our first event is on January 30 and is a Creative Exchange in partnership with the Refugee Art Project, in person at their centre in Ashfield. Registrations open soon so keep your eye on our socials in January! And take part in person on online in the AHNNA member led-SPHERE series Lunch and Learn: Creative Workshop Series – back again after a hugely successful year in 2024.
Grow your profile and learn about others! Thanks to the very accomplished Martha Waugh, whose recent research was promoted by the WHO/Jameel Arts and Health Laboratory, and to AHNNA’s wonderful Sculpture-By-The Sea exhibitor and media officer Elyssa Sykes Smith, AHNNA members have full instructions and support for how to create an online profile that will be housed and shared from a redesigned AHNNA website and YouTube channel. Watch for the transformation early in the new year!
Leadership, mentoring and career development! AHNNA and the Cadfactory expect to offer further mentoring opportunities for socially engaged artists in 2025. Through the new policy node, AHNNA will be hosting a series of leadership and sector development workshops with many opportunities to build further collaborative projects.
Policy and research development As part of the new node, AHNNA will be leading a webinar and dialogue series to build on the policy successes of Revive 2023 and the NSW Health and the Arts Refresh 2024-2032, and staying in dialogue with policy thinking around the country, from the next steps of the Pinnaroo project and the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts to the social prescribing trial in Queensland and their blueprint for community based health facility redevelopment, and the similar model developed by artist and researcher Erica Seccombe (kickstarted by a 2021 article AHNNA commissioned for our blog we might add!), to the Performance, Health and Creative Care working group at ADSA, the advocacy for arts and climate change led by the Creative Recovery Network, and many others.
I’d like to thank the many people who make our work possible. Nearly all of it comes from the dedicated, time-and-energy consuming volunteer labour of people who hold with us the vision of transforming people and creating change through the arts and of nurturing and celebrating the artists who are at the heart of it all. My President’s message is simply to urge us to continue to resist the forces that place us in competition with each other for scarce resources. This space of connection and collaboration instead of competition is what AHNNA offers and aspires to grow. I hope that we ease exhausting workloads by pooling our resources rather than duplicating them, and by proactively offering our resources (like the links in this post) we will together achieve our aim of seeing, celebrating and elevating everyone’s amazing work, so that all people can access arts and cultural practice for individual and collective wellbeing.
We hope you join us in 2025.
Claire Hooker
AHNNA President 2024
Image credit: Unsplash
Posted by Dr Claire Hooker
Senior Lecturer, Health and Medical Humanities; Director, Bioethics program, Sydney Health Ethics, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney
