The Big Anxiety
26 – 27 May 2022
QUT Gardens Point, Brisbane City
Content warning: mental health, suicide
Brisbane’s first mental health and arts festival, The Big Anxiety will explore how arts-based experiences – from high-tech interactive environments to innovative conversation formats – can help people work through trauma, suicidality, anxiety or stress, creating the connections needed for better psychosocial health.
Featured events include:
Edge of the Present
The world’s first virtual reality (VR) environment for suicide prevention. Participants will experience spectacular visual transformations, which have been shown to improve mood and hopefulness after 10 minutes. In partnership with Metro South Health and supported by Suicide Prevention Australia, The Big Anxiety Brisbane will run an experimental study of the benefits of Edge of the Present for people experiencing suicidal thoughts.
EmbodiMap
An interactive VR tool designed to support the exploration of anxiety, stress and trauma in the body. EmbodiMap allows users to interact with a 3D life-sized version of their body, ‘painting’ or mapping their feelings, thoughts, and emotions onto this avatar.
Awkward Conversations
Gold Coast artist and art therapist Daniele Constance will curate Awkward Conversations, a series of conversations, led by artists with lived experience, in experiential formats around hard-to-talk-about subjects that relate to mental health.
The Big Reach
An intensive two-day paid event, The Big Reach encompasses workshops, conversations, performances, demonstrations of immersive media and VR and multiple sideshows. It features more than 30 artists and creative presenters, including Marianne Wobcke (Girrimay nurse, midwife and award-winning artist from North Queensland), Uti Kulintjaku (artists and ngangkari (healers) from the APY Lands in South Australia) performers Daniele Constance and Margi Brown-Ash and interactive media artists and participatory designers from fEEL Lab and QUT Design Studio.
For more information, visit The Big Anxiety website
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