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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 and the growing research base in arts and health at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture.
Participatory Research & Engagement
Featured Media
Skilled AI Companions
UNSW researchers are developing a bilingual AI companion to support Chinese and Mandarin-speaking international students as they navigate language barriers, loneliness and the challenges of studying far from home. By speaking both English and Mandarin, the prototype is being tested as a way to offer supportive conversations that help students process difficult thoughts and feelings, and connect with useful resources in their everyday lives.
Skilled Companions 2025
Skilled Companions is our start-up company developing screen-based companions that combine conversation and psychosocial support. Informed by lived experience, designed with communities, and driven by custom-AI. Skilled Companions fills the gap in quality support for loneliness, dementia, and mental health. Each companion is crafted using lived experience data and grounded in psychological expertise—providing trusted, relatable support that complements the work of human carers and clinicians.
Creating Impact by designing immersive experiences
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 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.
- Academic Team
- Professional Staff
Academic Team
Professional Staff
Event Highlights
A collection of events and festivals produced by the Big Anxiety Research Centre.
The Big Anxiety – Taking Care of Mental Health in Times of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2022) brings together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines to re-imagine approaches to crisis, support, and care.
Features artists/writers/researchers from The Big Anxiety festival including Siri Hustvedt, Claudia Rankine, Evelyn Araluen, Noreen Giffney, Lynn Froggett, Marianne Wobcke, Jill Bennett, fEEL Lab, Uti Kulintjaku.
Contact us
Big Anxiety Research Centre
UNSW School of Art & Design
Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd
Paddington NSW 2021
Australia
Email: barc@unsw.edu.au