Explore creativity for wellbeing with the DAX Centre! Weekly creative activities throughout October
As a part of Mental Health Awareness Month, the SANE forums team have worked with The Dax Centre to create creative prompts to invite forum members to engage with the CHIME framework.
Using our creativity can be a great way to help our mental wellbeing and connect with others, and The Dax Centre is excited to help inspire this through on forums this month.
Each week, over the next five weeks (30th Sep – 31st Oct), we will post a creative activity prompt for the forum community to respond to, inspired by each letter of the CHIME framework and an artwork from Cunningham Dax Collection.
So, follow along to connect with others through the discovery of artwork from the Cunningham Dax collection and reflection on the CHIME framework through creative activities.
Get crafty, share your interpretations of the artworks, and the creations the art inspires.
The first prompt for Connectedness will be posted next week! All levels of engagement are welcomed and encouraged!
Subscribe to this thread to participate!
Please note: In keeping with the Community Guidelines, the SANE Forums are an anonymous space. Please be sure that no images or art shared contains information that could reveal identity or location (e.g. street names, wider shots of houses, number plates, landmarks or recognisable geographical features, or ANY faces, even if it’s not your own).
1) External view of The Dax Centre. Courtesy of The Dax Centre.
Introduction to The Dax Centre & Cunningham Dax Collection
The Dax Centre is an art gallery in Melbourne, VIC, presenting artworks by artists with lived experience of mental ill health and trauma.
We run educational programs and creative workshops and conserve the Cunningham Dax art collection to bring awareness to mental illness and break down stigma.
Currently, we have two exhibitions on display. These include, She Who Persists, an exhibition of textile-based artworks from our collection by female artists with lived experience of mental illness or trauma, and The Anxiety Project, an exhibition by professional contemporary artists with lived experience of anxiety.
2) She Who Persists installation image, 2024. Featuring artwork: Edith Agnes Harrington, Pink Twill Coat, c.1950-1960, woolen embroidered garment, 120 x 62cm, 2000.011 Edith Agnes Harrington, Short Jacket, c.1950-1960, grey serge embroidered garment, 70 x 60cm, 2000.012 Edith Agnes Harrington, Black Twill Trousers, c.1950-1960, black wool embroidered garment, 86 x 50cm, 2000.013. Courtesy of The Dax Centre.
Where it all started...
We are the custodians of the Cunningham Dax Collection. The collection contains over 16,000 pieces of art by people with lived experience of mental ill health or trauma. It was started in the 1940s by the psychiatrist that pioneered art therapy in Victorian, Dr. Eric Cunningham Dax.
The collection if Heritage Listed and one of a kind in Australia, with only four collections of this caliber in the world.
To learn more about the history of the collection, click here to view an interactive timeline and short video.
3) The Dax Centre Gallery Coordinator in the collection archive room. Courtesy of The Dax Centre.
Why we do what we do...
SANE and The Dax Centre partnered in 2018 with the shared goal of using art and creativity to break down stigma surrounding mental illness.
We believe the universal language of art is a powerful tool we can use to help people better connect, empathize and understand each other’s experiences.
In addition, we see creativity as an incredibly important part of looking after our own mental wellbeing and expressing ourselves.
We are always eager to find new ways to activate the collection, so we were so thrilled to be invited to create some prompts for our forums!
4) Jacqui Stockdale, Finished, 2006, oil on linen, 35 x 41cm, courtesy of the artist. Featured in The Anxiety Project exhibition, 2024.
Introduction to the CHIME Framework
The CHIME framework stands for Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Purpose, and Empowerment.
The framework was developed by Dr Mary Leamy and her colleagues. Looking at research studies on people’s personal experiences of recovery in mental health, they found five common processes which showed up in most people’s recovery experiences and summarized as CHIME.
The CHIME framework guides a lot of the work we do at The Dax Centre, especially when working with lived experience artists to develop themes for new art exhibitions. Therefore, we thought it’d be a perfect fit for creating a new creative forum activity!
