Briony Luttrell

Presented by Hannah Banks and Briony Luttrell in the panel session Sharing, Spiralling, Slowing

and Showing (Chair: Sarah Courtis).

Using creativity as a therapeutic act is common in theatre and performance as performers may

sacrifice their wellbeing in a Sisyphean pursuit of romanticised suffering and the endless search

for ‘authentic’ and meaningful creative expression. Current scholarship around mental health

and wellbeing in creative industries and tertiary education indicates a need for novel

interventions in how we make and teach making (Daniel 2022; Gross & Musgrave 2020; Orygen

2017). As practitioners and educators, we propose that creating from places of unresolved

difficulties or mining our own trauma for performance is problematic and we highlight the

importance of care, personal creative safety, and emotionally and ethically sustainable creative

practice.

This paper explores the development of a new performance work, The Chair and The Cello.

Since 2023 we have been researching practitioner well-being, or what we have termed creative

safety. Creative safety is our innovative approach to the process of developing creative works

that promotes equity, wellbeing, and career sustainability for practitioners. The Chair and The

Cello explored creative safety in the devising process by developing a new performance

directed by Hyland, performed by Banks and Luttrell with production management and design

from Walling. Starting with provocations involving stories of personal difficulty, we investigated

the application of Baim’s model of The Drama Spiral, a decision-making tool to help

practitioners navigate the use of personal stories, and Flemmer et al’s Empathetic Partnership

framework, to test innovative methods of collaborative creative safety. This paper will

accompany the premiere performance of The Chair and The Cello at ADSA 2025.

The proliferation of software-based technology in the recording studio sector resulted in notions of technological democracy. However, this position is contested as it does not consider the representation of women and various minority groups that are often excluded. This research explores the barriers to entry and the challenges and frustrations for Australian First Nations music producers. Through an indigenous-led music production workshop project, the research team conducted daily yarning sessions at the conclusion of each day. The findings found many challenges and frustrations for the participants and mentors in the program as they attempted to participate in the recording sector including access to suitable housing and infrastructure, cultural safety in recording studios, ongoing discrimination in the music industry, and lateral violence and jealousy around perceived success. This project seeks to understand these barriers and look toward approaches to improve education, diversity, equity, inclusion and participation for First Nations music producers.

Conference paper presented by Hannah Banks at the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Conference (AWGSA) 2024 “Not Just Another (Feminist) Conference”: Gathering To Explore Courageous Feminisms.

ABSTRACT

Our Flag Means Death (2022) is a television series set in the Golden Age of Piracy, premiering in March 2022 to critical acclaim and unprecedented audience engagement. It can be argued that this show is a deliberate romantic queer reading of historical facts. In our article (Luttrell and Banks 2024) we proposed that queer reading is a particular form of audience labour, a practice of learning to recognize, identify and create patterns of semiotic resources, Intertextual Thematic Formations (Lemke 1995a, 1995b). This practice is a reaction to a history of being erased or relegated to subtext in fictional media, exacerbated by broader cultural and political contexts that criminalise, censor, and de-humanize LGBTQIA+ bodies and lives. The diversity in Our Flag Means Death goes beyond the LGBTQIA+ community (including Season 2’s representations of women), confirmed by multiple media think pieces and fan writings on the internet. In this paper we will make the case that readers usually have to ‘do extra work’ to see marginalised bodies and communities in texts. We discuss Our Flag Means Death as a case study of care and empathy in how the show creators approached diverse and inclusive representations, both on the show and in the staffing. We will also explore how the fandom exemplifies a community of care, reveling in creativity and joy to celebrate a television show they love.

Conference paper presented by Hannah Banks and Briony Luttrell at the IASPM Australia-Aotearoa/New Zealand 2024 Branch Conference "Musical Translations and Transformations" on 4th December 2024.

ABSTRACT

The cultural myth of the tortured artist or creation as act of self-flagellation or therapy is rife in the arts and creative industries, especially popular music. Whilst there are therapeutic fields that advocate for creativity as an effective way to process emotions, the industrial practice of music making and generating new intellectual property for a commercial audience is at odds with methods of creating that put the maker at risk and undermine the sustainability of a career (Gross & Musgrave 2020). The industrial context of portfolio careers, the gig economy, and dramatically underpaid creative labour create an environment rife with burnout, financial, and emotional difficulties. Current scholarship also points to increasingly poor mental health in young people (Orygen 2017), creative practitioners (Elmes & Knox 2022) and the challenges of this in higher education contexts are only starting to be felt (Daniel 2022). We write this paper as creative practitioners and educators who have seen too many of our students and peers sacrifice their own wellbeing in a Sisyphean pursuit of romanticized suffering and ‘authentic’ and meaningful creative expression. We propose a model of teaching creative practice informed by Baim’s (2020) Drama Spiral, where we encourage students to not create from places of unresolved difficulties or mine their own trauma, instead encouraging them to develop personal creative safety and engage in emotionally and ethically sustainable creative practice.

The retirement sector is in a time of significant rethinking and upheaval due to changes in generational expectations, national policy direction, and financial modelling with specific focus on ageing in place (Drilon, 2024). Creative Conversations is a research project that responds to industrial need by exploring the future of the retirement sector across multiple themes and areas of focus. The project used a World Café methodology to interview n>400 residents and staff from 7 retirement villages across Australia’s Sunshine Coast region over 2 years. In addition, a focus group comprising younger community members not in retirement provided valuable insights, facilitating a thorough investigation into public perceptions of retirement overall, as well as specific attitudes towards the retirement village sector. A multidisciplinary team of researchers in Gerontologic Nursing, Exercise Physiology, Occupational Therapy, and Creative Practice explored themes of technology, culture, physical activity, clinical care, creativity, intergenerationally, and environmental design. As a result of the findings of this industry funded project, the project team developed a framework for analysis and reporting to provide the industry partner and the broader sector, a series of recommendations based on the feedback, perceptions and attitudes of residents, staff, and the wider community. In this oral presentation, we highlight this framework, discuss the significant findings, and explore the recommendations synthesised from the data. In doing so, the project provides the background for a regionally focussed multi-state report on the retirement sector forthcoming in 2024/5.