Evaluator Felicity Heffernan (Artist)

I am a artist who is also a lawyer - so I like to make public art, ephemeral art & educational art to look at human rights and empower democracy for all. I have an art qualification and a legal qualification. Recently I participated in the Sydney Biennale and the International Festival. These are my bio areas of interest: 1. Social conscience Art using recycled materials As I work primarily in the environmental and human rights area I am interested in producing art works raising social conscience issues. 2. Ephemeral Art - I enjoy creating works that make you stop and think about life and involve community participation. 3. I am interested in Can Art be Medicine? Health conditions where art and art therapies have proven to be beneficial are as follows: *music therapies have proven particularly useful for facilitating communication when verbal expression is problematic in conditions such as autism (Gold et al 2006), whereas *clay sculpture can be particularly useful for assisting aggression management (Henley 2002). Sometimes however, it can be a matter of applying *different combinations of practice to meet particular health needs, for instance *drawing and *writing has proven a useful communication tool for patients with eating disorders (Zimmerman et al 1993), or photography and writing in community health contexts (Creighton et al 2015).