WHAT’S BENEATH OUR FEET? with Melissa McDevitt Weston and Carla van Laar

For Arts Therapists wishing to practice Nature-based Arts Therapy in Australia, Cultural awareness adds a layer of depth to our practice, and can become a profoundly healing experience for Country, Traditional Owners and Arts Therapists, as well as the people we work with.

Melissa McDevitt Weston is a proud Boon Wurrung woman and contemporary artist who provides Cultural advice and training for Creative Arts Therapist Carla van Laar, a non-Aboriginal woman who lives and works in Boon Wurrung Country.

Together, in this presentation, we share stories of our evolving relationship, connection with the living world through art, and practices that make our work more mindful and Culturally sensitive.

Melissa draws on her Cultural knowledge and experience to provide practical considerations for Art Therapists working on Country, and Carla shares some of the ways that she practices, emphasising relationship, deep listening, and respect.

We discuss the importance of understanding the ongoing connection between Aboriginal People and the land, and the significance of Cultural Heritage and what it means in the Australian context.

The question, “What’s beneath our feet?” will be explored through discussion of the many artefacts that lie mere centimetres under the earth’s surface, and the stories that they tell about the people who lived on and cared for this continent for thousands upon thousands of years before White settlement and Colonisation.

Although we turn to Nature to nurture our own healing, trauma can be held in the land as well, through events that occurred there. We consider the mutuality of healing, and ways that we can be part of healing the Country that helps to heal us.