Hope, recovery and humanity: Lived experience leads learning

The Listening to Voices Project is where critical conversations about mental health intersect with the arts to produce deeply moving performances to address human distress, and to stimulate dialogue about mental health issues, seek support, and reduce stigma. The project draws on lived experience and uses the process of theatre and performance as a vehicle for personal and collective transformation.
The Listening to Voices project, Gateway Health, Charles Sturt University and the Three Rivers Department of Rural Health collaborated to co-design and co-produce a unique online education resource. The people with lived experience involved in the project were essential contributors to the resource design and development. The successful collaboration required to produce this resource involved a paradigm shift that positioned people with lived experience as experts. The process also required a shift towards justice – that is, an unambiguous focus on the rights of all people to be included in society through meaningful participation, grounded in their chosen identity.

This presentation will provide an overview of the resource and highlight how through engagement with the Listening to Voices material, people can: develop respect for the lived experience of mental health issues: understand the issues people face in navigating the mental health system; explore power structures and discrimination; and build their capacity to advocate for a more just system.


Learning objectives
Upon completion of this presentation participants will:
• be familiar with the Listening to Voices online resource;
• appreciate lived experience and theatre as powerful educative tools;
• understand how the voices of people with lived experience of mental health issues can be authentically embedded into education activities to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes for practice.