A museum-based wellbeing program for high school students.
HEAD2ART (H2A) grew out of my work as both a museum professional and an art therapist, around one question: how can we build a sustainable, replicable and scalable museum-based program that supports the mental health and wellbeing of high school students? Museums are well placed to support young people's wellbeing, yet often hold back, unsure they have the knowledge, skills or resources, and this project shows that, with the right partnerships and drawing on socially mediated inquiry-based learning and psychodynamic group art therapy, that barrier can be crossed.
H2A was designed and researched in collaboration with Jo Davies at the Museum of Art and Culture yapang in Lake Macquarie and Byron Williams at headspace Newcastle, along with the University of Newcastle, across three eight-week pilots between 2023 and 2025, working with the students at Lake Macquarie High School and their student services officer, Tony Bell.
HEAD2ART is not a clinical art therapy program. It is a wellbeing program for high school students living with anxiety, loneliness and low-level mental health difficulties, a Tier 2 prevention program for young people at risk but below diagnostic thresholds, working in partnership with headspace, the national youth mental health service, rather than in place of the clinical care it provides. It offers a safe, non-stigmatising space and peer connection to help young people manage isolation and the difficulties that come with it.
With more than one hundred headspace centres and over a thousand museums across Australia, HEAD2ART is built to be repeated and scaled, so that other museums and headspace services can run it, and so that galleries and museums come to be seen as places where young people's wellbeing can be supported.
Each session runs for two hours, once a week for eight weeks, with the same small group and the same facilitators throughout, so trust has time to build. Students look closely at works in the gallery, make their own art in response, and share food and conversation along the way. There is no pressure to be good at art and no requirement to talk about the work; students take part at their own pace, and that freedom is part of what makes the space feel safe.
