HEAD2ART: An Arts-Based Inquiry Developing Museum Wellbeing Programs
The Head2art logo on a blue background
Helena Bezzina
Please join us for the launch event of this exhibition at the University Gallery Thursday 30th July from 5.30pm
HEAD2ART is a visual dialogue between researcher and participants, exploring how young people develop wellbeing through museum-based creative engagement. This arts-based PhD exhibition emerges from partnerships with Joanna Davies (Visual Arts and Public Programs Leader, Lake Macquarie City Council) and Byron Williams (headspace Newcastle), featuring artworks by students from Lake Macquarie High School.
The gallery holds two connected spaces. Bezzina’s researcher-response works, time-based charcoal animations and erasure drawings, are in visual conversation with student pieces from three eight-week museum-based pilots: check-in drawings and works made in response to gallery exhibitions, documenting how they found calm through safe, scaffolded creative freedom.
What emerges when young people, drawing on the innate therapeutic capacity of the museum, gain agency over their creative choices and feel held, seen and heard?
HEAD2ART was partially funded by the NSW Government’s Children and Young People Wellbeing Recovery Initiative Grant and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
IMAGE: HEAD2ART logo by Creative Z
Event Information
- Date: This exhibition opens Wednesday 29 July 2026 and runs until Saturday 29 August 2026
- Location: The University Gallery & Senta Taft Hendry Museum, GS Building, 103 University Dr, Callaghan, NSW 2308
- Campus: Newcastle (Callaghan)
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.