{"id":1597399,"date":"2024-04-09T04:17:44","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T04:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.broadagenda.com.au\/?p=13528"},"modified":"2024-04-09T04:17:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T04:17:44","slug":"inspiring-women-jen-webb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/09\/inspiring-women-jen-webb\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiring women: Jen Webb"},"content":{"rendered":"
BroadAgenda is featuring a short series of profiles on amazing women and LGBTIQ + folks. You’re about to meet Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, Jen Webb<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m very interested in people, and particularly in communities of people, and what provides meaning and connection in their lives. And because I am a creative practitioner myself (I\u2019m a poet), my work over the past decades has focused particularly on how artists \u2013 by which I mean anyone who does creative \u2018stuff\u2019, anyone who thinks of themselves, at some level, as a creative person who does creative things \u2013 how such people fit into society, and how society fits them to itself.<\/p>\n One example of that is what I did for my PhD. I was living in Rockhampton, in Central Queensland, which at least in the 1990s was not a centre for creative excellence. But I knew there were plenty of artists tucked away here and there in the communities up and down the Western line (Yeppoon to Winton). So I set out to talk to local artists, get a sense of their life, of their work and what they make, who they know and what they do in their community, how they make their living, and how they publish their work (exhibition, performance, book or journal publishing etc.).<\/p>\n In between such conversations, I talked to members of local governments, schoolteachers, representatives of community organisations etc., and read the local newspaper if there was one, and visited the local museum where there was one. All this provides a sense of how a community is organised and structured, how its members see themselves, and what they think of their artists and the art things they make and do.<\/p>\n At the end of this research I crafted a narrative about that community that showed what sort of art practices are valued and in what contexts they are valued; Oh, and I wrote a book of short stories about it all, too<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m particularly excited about the work I\u2019ve been doing with my colleagues over the past almost-decade<\/a> on the impact of creative practices on people suffering from trauma or other stress and distress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We have been conducting biannual month-long workshops with returned service personnel who are wounded, injured or ill, and teaching them skills in creative writing<\/a>, or visual art<\/a>, or music-making; and the effects are both positive, and sustained; five years after completing a workshop, they\u2019re still doing very well<\/a>.<\/p>\n We extended this into similar, but much shorter, workshops with rural and regional communities who have suffered from environmental catastrophe (fires, drought, flood) and seen how writing and talking and drawing et al. can help both the individuals and the community as a whole to recover and rebuild<\/a>.<\/p>\nIf you were sitting next to someone at a dinner party, how would you explain your work and research in a nutshell?<\/strong><\/h5>\n
What are you currently working on that’s making you excited or that has legs?<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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