04/09/2026
š¬ Five Years of Creative Mental Health Forums - the short film collection š
There is an extraordinary groundswell around Creative Health and Healing Arts happening internationally right now. It is exciting to see major organisations, institutions and health leaders recognising the contribution that arts, creativity, culture and connection can make to health and wellbeing.
As we welcome this growing recognition, I also want to remember the roots.
For the past five years, a community of artists, Creative and Experiential Therapists, educators, practitioners and community members has gathered here on BoonWurrung Country in the small coastal town of Inverloch in Gippsland, in the far South East of regional Australia, two hours drive away from any major city, for the Creative Mental Health Forum.
We had no institutional affiliation. No major funding body. No organisation underwriting the work.
The Forums were independently initiated, peer-led and crowd-funded ā made possible because people believed enough in the value of gathering together to contribute their time, knowledge, creativity, labour, money and care.
Many of the people who were part of these gatherings have been working in what we now increasingly call the field of āCreative Healthā for decades.
We have developed practices, created programs, supported communities, generated knowledge, written, researched, taught, advocated and kept going through times when this work attracted considerably less recognition ā and sometimes considerable resistance from established ideas about what constitutes health, evidence, knowledge and legitimate practice.
These roots are important.
New fields do not suddenly appear when institutions begin to recognise them. They grow through the accumulated work of people and communities who have been cultivating them, often quietly and persistently, for many years.
Our Creative Mental Health Forums have been one such small part of that much larger story.
I have now brought together the short films created across all five Forums, from 2021ā2025, on one webpage.
Together they form an archive of a community and a field in motion: five years of gathering, experimenting, creating, sharing practice, making knowledge, building relationships and imagining possibilities for mental health and wellbeing.
Iām very happy to make this collection publicly available now, as Creative Health enters this new era of visibility and possibility.
May we embrace what is emerging while remembering and honouring the many people, practices and communities whose persistent work made the ground fertile.
And may we continue to ensure that Creative Health remains connected to its grassroots: to artists and practitioners, lived experience, communities, culture, relationship, creativity and collective care.
Five years of Creative Mental Health Forums, 2021ā2025. š±
Enjoy the collection of short films here:
https://carlavanlaar.com/creative-mental-health-events-2026/
https://vimeo.com/1145850756?fl=pl&fe=sh After premiering with Forum participants and screening internationally at the Creative Therapies Global Business Summit, this 2025 documentary is now offered publicly so its stories, creativity and conversations can ripple outward. You are warmly invited to w...
