Poetry on Prescription: Healing with the Arts

Should a doctor prescribe poetry-writing, or visiting an art gallery, as an alternative for medication? Medical professionals are doing so in a range of countries. The benefits of creative and community activity for health and wellbeing are increasingly being recognised globally. Could this be a case where Western medicine is catching up with practices First Nations communities have enacted for millennia? How are health and wellbeing impacted by creative art?  

This two-day symposium will bring together artists, health practitioners and end users to learn more about the relationship between creative art and wellbeing, with a special focus on poetry. The broad context for our discussions is the practice and processes of social prescribing: the prescribing of social and/or creative activities for people presenting with mental or physical ill health.

Sessions will range across a discussion of current policy settings, papers on the relationship between poetry and wellbeing, panel-discussions among artists and community workers, along with hands-on poetry writing and creative arts workshops. 

This event is recommended for health and arts practitioners, professional care givers, link workers and anyone interested or working in the dynamic health and arts space.

Programme:

Day One - Friday 22 November, 12:00pm - 7.00 pm 

NB 12.00pm lunch for F2F attendees, with 12.30pm start to proceedings & online transmisson), University of Canberra Room 1A21 (Theatrette, accessed from the foyer joining Building 1 and Mizzuna Café)

*For Day One, participants can attend in-person or online, just choose your ticket type on checkout.

• Short and engaging presentations with poets and experts discussing poetry and wellbeing experiments  from a range of perspectives.
• Scholarly papers on poetry's relation to the repair and restoration of creative energies.
• Keynote address by prominent sound, video, installation and performance artist with major hospital-based works and clinical experience as inaugural artist-member of the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic, Dr Vic McEwan.
• Announcement of UC Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize and Health Poetry Prize winners.

Day Two - Saturday 23 November, 9am to 5pm, University of Canberra Room 1C50 (Clive Price Room, above UC Refectory)

[** PLEASE NOTE that the ticket allocation for Day Two (Saturday) is now exhausted. There are, however, still tickets for Day One (Friday) **]

• Creative workshops delivered by UC specialists: a haiku workshop, for connectedness and wellbeing, and a creative expression workshop, for health workers and researchers, to help participants improve their understanding of the impact of creative practice.
• Performance conversation, with readings, by Barkindji man Dr Paul Collis, Dr Jen Crawford and Prof. Paul Magee, discussing the team's work in the Story Ground Project, which uses Writing on Country as a way to facilitate creative awareness and appreciation of millennia-old stories of Country all around us.
• Panel discussion by two arts health workers on social prescribing approaches to augmenting community, paired with two creative writers using the public word to bring pervasive practices of caring to greater prominence. 

For FULL PROGRAMME DETAILS see the Poetry on Prescription website

Accessibility: both venues have accessibility options for attendees. The Friday venue is on the ground floor. The Saturday venue is accessible by lift. Please contact cccr@canberra.edu.au for further details.

This event is hosted by the University of Canberra's Centre for Creative and Cultural Research in collaboration with the Health Research Institute as part of UC's Research Festival 2024. Get involved and explore the full program on our website.