“Arts-based Community Interventions
for Youth Mental Health”

Professor Katherine Boydell FASSA
Professor of Mental Health and
Director, Arts-based Knowledge Translation Lab
Black Dog Institute

Date: Wednesday, 12 November 2025, 6.00–7.30 pm AEST
Entry: No charge
Zoom webinar: Link to follow
All are welcome

Business of the Meeting

The Agenda for the Ordinary General Meeting will be available on the Meetings page of the website.

Summary:  The mental health of young people has decreased significantly in recent years, worsened by global challenges like COVID-19 and climate change. In Australia, approximately 40% of 16–24-year-olds are experiencing mental health conditions. One-half of mental disorders begin by age 14, and 75% by age 24. Young people with mental ill-health face increased risks of social exclusion, discrimination, educational challenges, and human rights violations.

Recent policy documents have advocated for a person-centred system that prioritises prevention and early intervention via ‘whole of community’ approaches. This requires diverse, age-appropriate, innovative solutions that extend beyond formal mental health services to include informal support networks and local context. In this vein, there is growing evidence to support community-based social interventions, particularly creative and arts activities. Research shows arts engagement positively impacts self-esteem, confidence, relationship building, and belonging—all linked to resilience and wellbeing. Arts-based interventions offer inclusive, non-stigmatising mental health support.

While traditionally studied in clinical settings, research increasingly demonstrates arts benefits in community contexts. Our arts-based knowledge translation Lab at the Black Dog Institute develops and evaluates creative, community-based responses to youth mental health crises. Art represents an effective research tool across project stages and a direct intervention for young people to alleviate distress and enhance wellbeing through meaning-making, skill-building, and community connection. This presentation will describe, via three exemplars, the use of the arts in mental health research with young people.

Katherine Boydell is the founder and director of the world’s first multidisciplinary Arts-based Knowledge Translation (AKT) Lab, based at the Black Dog Institute, UNSW Sydney, that uses art forms to produce and disseminate knowledge, evaluate its impact and make research accessible beyond academia. Her lab received the Tom Trauer Research and Evaluation award from The Mental Health Service (TheMHS) in 2024. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and the inaugural recipient of the Milner Interdisciplinary prize from the Royal Society of New South Wales. She is Executive Editor of the journal Arts and Health, Editor of British Journal of Psychiatry Open, and Associate Editor of Early Intervention in Psychiatry, and has published more than 300 articles, book chapters and books.

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