Big Anxiety Research Centre

Transforming mental health through cultural innovation

The Big Anxiety Research Centre [BARC] is a unique transdisciplinary enterprise, dedicated to transforming thinking and practice in mental health through creative collaboration and cultural innovation.

We research lived experience through a distinctive combination of trauma-informed, psychosocial research and creative practice, developing the rich communications and engagement practices we need to understand, connect with and support everyday experiences of mental health, trauma and suicidality.

Our mission is to attune to lived experience, to promote innovative creative experimentation and wide community engagement, and to collectively generate the tools, programs and creative media we need to support mental and emotional health throughout our communities.

BARC has evolved from the former National Institute for Experimental Arts [NIEA] and builds on the success of The Big Anxiety festivals in Sydney (2017 and 2019) and the growing research base in arts and health at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture.

Participatory Research & Engagement

The Big Anxiety

BARC supports The Big Anxiety - one of the world’s largest mental health arts festivals and an ongoing engagement program. Founded in Sydney 2017, The Big Anxiety is a national festival, staged in both Queensland (Brisbane and Warwick) and Melbourne in 2022.

fEEL Lab

BARC incorporates the ARC Laureate Felt Experience & Empathy Lab (fEEL). The lab brings together specialists in immersive media, participatory design, trauma studies and psychology to advance new methods in the study of embodied subjective experience.

emLAB

BARC incorporates emLAB: the ethnographic media LAB, which brings together a community of researchers and practitioners working at the intersections of media, technology, ethnography and art.

Creating impact by designing immersive experiences

ARC Laureate & UNSW Scientia Professor Jill Bennett and her team co-design immersive art projects with individuals and communities with lived experience of trauma across regional, rural and remote Australia. Founder of the Big Anxiety Festival and the UNSW Big Anxiety Research Centre, Jill shares insights into the kinds of impact immersive art can have, and on the ways we think about mental health services, pointing to new ways of supporting people from the perspective of lived experience. The projects featured are Waumananyi (Man in the Log), led by Uti Kulintjaku (commissioned for The Big Anxiety, 2019), Parragirls Past, Present (The Big Anxiety, 2017) and EmbodiMap (fEEL) - visit fEEL Lab for details.