Interest, Enablement, Joy, and Meaning: Listening for What’s Life Enhancing About Sharing Our Stories Through Art

Abstract

This article presents some of the key findings of the author’s doctoral art-based research Seeing Her Stories: An Art-Based Inquiry (van Laar, 2020b), in which she worked with a group of women participants to investigate what can happen when we share our stories through art. In particular, she focuses on how listening deeply to participants revealed the ways in which sharing our stories through art was life enhancing and why this is important in the current changing context of Australia’s mental health service system.