Creative Care
Creative Care explores creative practice research and teaching in relation to health and wellbeing. Our focus is on creative interventions and responses to cancer, aged care and mental health, as well as the social and environmental determinants and lived experience of health. Creative Care facilitates interdisciplinary, partnered projects that engage with the creative and health industries, working with researchers spanning the creative arts, design, health and social care.
Research Projects
Researchers
Research Theme Leaders
Associate Professor Keely Macarow
Associate Professor Keely Macarow has worked in senior research and teaching leadership roles in RMIT’s School of Art and is currently coordinating the development of a new area in Creative Care for the School. Keely has worked as an artist, creative producer, curator and writer for film, video, performance and exhibition projects which have been presented in venues including the Powerhouse Museum, ACMI, West Space, CCP, Bendigo Art Gallery (Australia); the ICA, CCA, The Lux Centre, The Norwich Festival of Women Filmmaker’s (UK), School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center, (US). She has worked with artists, designers, social scientists, housing activists, medical and engineering researchers to explore how art and design interventions and thinking can be applied to healthcare, political and housing settings and for public exhibition and performance. Keely has worked with a range of medical and healthcare partners including St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne who she collaborated with for exhibition, teaching and applied research projects, including Designing Sound for Health and Wellbeing, (funded by the Australia Research Council, 2008-2011) and Smart Heart Necklace: Revolutionising Ambulatory Cardiac Monitors (funded by Gandel Philanthropy, 2014-2015). She has collaborated with nursing and aged care researchers, creative arts, choreography and design researchers from the Karolinska Institutet, the University of the Arts Stockholm, Konstfack (Sweden) to investigate space and place in end of life care settings for the Do Bra projects: Space and Place in End-of-Life Care: Co-Designing Experience-Based Interventions (funded by FORTE, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare grant, 2014-2016) and Co-design for better experiences in end-of-life settings. A transdisciplinary project (funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas, 2017-2019). Keely has also collaborated with researchers from Lund University, Malmo University (Sweden) and RMIT University (Melbourne) on the Homefullness project (funded by a STINT Initiation grant from The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, 2015-2016).
keely.macarow@rmit.edu.au
Professor Kit Wise
Professor Kit Wise has held senior educational leadership roles since 2008, including Associate Dean Education in the Faculty of Art Design & Architecture at Monash University, and Director, School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania. He has engaged in an advisory capacity with creative arts schools on course design and interdisciplinarity, including LaSalle, Singapore, Massey, New Zealand and Banff, Canada. He is Deputy Chair of the Executive Council of ACUADS (Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools) and an Executive Board Member for the Deans and Directors of Creative Arts, Australia.
kit.wise@rmit.edu.au
Dr Ruth DeSouza
Dr Ruth DeSouza is a 2020 RMIT Vice Chancellor's Fellow, based in the School of Art. Her background is in nursing where she has extensive experience as a clinician, community engaged researcher and academic in New Zealand and Australia. Ruth set up a maternal mental health service in Auckland, New Zealand and her PhD examined the experiences of new mothers from migrant backgrounds using a postcolonial feminist lens. She is currently developing a podcast about decolonising maternity and examining cultural safety, and reproductive justice in settler colonial contexts. Ruth is also investigating the use of apps in pregnancy during COVID-19, following up on recent work about digital health literacies and refugee and migrant background mothers. Ruth has extensive networks across the Melbourne creative industries and is on the Fair Play project reference committee.
ruth.desouza@rmit.edu.au
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.
cast@rmit.edu.au
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