Skip to main content

The Art In Healing

 

"Our creativity is what enables us to function, day to day, in a changing environment, without it we would not be a surviving species". Richard Hill


‘The Art In Healing’ explores the role that creativity and art 
play in people’s lives, particularly when personal trauma occurs or when people are afflicted by natural disasters.

The inspiration for the film came about by contemplating the questions; ‘Why is art such an important aspect to civilisation and our society’? and ‘Does the human brain benefit from interacting with art, and if so, how’? From these questions a number of people offered their experience and research, especially in describing brain plasticity and the ability of the brain to rewire after an artistic experience.

‘The Art In Healing’ showcases a number of professionals, ranging from art therapists Simona Weinstein and Cornelia Elbrecht, therapist Richard Hill, musicians, Merelyn and David Carter, artist, Dr Anne Riggs, street artist, Amanda Newman, arts facilitators: Brad Quilliam, Marilyn Gourley, Scotia Monkivitch, to people navigating traumatic events with arts driven healing: Matt Breen, Allara Ashton and Lisa Schaeffer.

Each person interviewed has been able to impart and show the effectiveness of creativity in a person’s life and well being. Emphasis is placed on the interaction of the facilitator and client on a one to one basis, but also on a much larger scale within a community post the Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday Fires as relayed by Brad Quilliam. The Pandemic has exacerbated and exhausted people world wide, but closer to home in Australia, street artist, Amanda Newman, is sending hope to people via her public art on Melbourne’s public walls.

Cornelia Elbrecht who started practising Art Therapy in the 70’s describes the struggles of this type of therapy to be taken seriously, but through the years there has been enormous progress made in recognition of art as providing healing for people on their personal journeys. Melbourne’s Dax centre is an attestation to that, consequently art was sourced from the Dax Centre, the Museum of Victoria, Private collections and Public collections to enhance the importance of art, but also, for the viewer to experience the artistic richness whilst watching the film. 

It is this same art that “give(s) people the chance to smile again, in a lot of cases, that's what the art therapy and the art healing are able to do”. -Brad Quilliam

‘The Art In Healing’ was filmed in Apollo Bay, Various locations in Melbourne, Cobram, Kinglake and Sydney. 
Crew were all sourced from Victoria.








Stella Grammenos-Dimadis

27th of September, 2021

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. "   Corrie Ten Boom Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker, who had helped many Jews escape during the Holocaust, was a prisoner and then a writer.  She held many memories, no doubt, fears; images that would stay forever and haunt her, but they were able to unlock a future for her that she would never have imagined.  Her writing and her boldness initiated her knighthood by the Queen of the Netherlands, The King's College in New York City named a new women's house in her honour, her book "The Hiding Place", was  made into a feature film, twice. Locked away in our computer hard drives are examples of our work and lives that we lock away when our computer sleeps, forgetting about their importance because we are always told to focus on the now, forgetting about our past.  Well, perhaps it is time that we also learn to love our past, regardless of what it was like, so that we can understand what our
Post a Comment
Read more

Writer's block

Writer's block The Writer's responsibility is to his art.  He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.  He has a dream.  It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it.  He has no peace until then... William Faulkner  Having written films, articles, essays, reports, it has always, at one stage or another, plagued me when I have had writer's block.  That moment when I sit staring at the computer screen as if it is an alien standing it's ground in a duel for battle with me.  Eyeing me, daring me to drop my weapons of my imagination.  The frustration builds up and chocolate beckons, serenading the virtues of itself.  It is all too familiar, this battle, and I may have thrown my writing in all together had it not been for my editor in the late 90's when I completed some articles for Who Weekly. I remember grizzling into the phone line with him that my writing was not perfect...there was something missing...I couldn't pinpoint it...it didn't make
2 comments
Read more
 Nature repeats itself "It never occurs to me that (skulls) have anything to do with death. They are very lively. I have enjoyed them very much in relation to the sky." Georgia O'Keefe In the previous blog, I wrote about the the human form and the importance of it in creativity and art.  Mastering the human form will allow the creator to master other forms in nature. I have some palm trees in the back yard which have surprised me by how high they have become.  They were sold as small trees and now over power my small back area, towering over the trees in suburban Melbourne.  Despite their height, I have enjoyed the changes that they display with each season.  I don't know much about palm trees, but come autumn, they shed some of the old branches and their bark.  Mornings I will wake to find these scattered in my very small yard, did I already say I have a small yard?  You can imagine the space these take.  In any case, recently I found a piece of the bark on the groun
Post a Comment
Read more