Creating Wellbeing
The Role of Making Practices in Academic Contexts
1st Edition
Published on 14. November 2025
220 pages
978-1-040-62507-1 (ISBN)
Description
Exploring how creative practices can revolutionise wellbeing and resilience in higher education, this groundbreaking collection brings together 25 academics who reveal how engaging with creative processes - from visual arts and crafts to performance and digital media - can serve as powerful tools for self-care and professional flourishing.
It acts as a guide for navigating the pressures of contemporary academia while maintaining one's authentic self through proven strategies such as visual journaling, collaborative filmmaking, and embodied creative practices. Each chapter combines theoretical insights with practical applications, offering both autoethnographic narratives and actionable case studies that demonstrate how making practices counter neoliberal academic pressures. Whether you're seeking to integrate creativity into research, enhance teaching through artistic approaches, or build sustainable practices for personal wellbeing, this book provides a roadmap. From soil-based art projects that foster ecological connection to comic-making strategies for international educators, it offers diverse pathways for reimagining your academic journey.
This would appeal to academics across all disciplines, researchers in educational wellbeing, and practitioners in arts and health fields. With this, one can transform isolated academic work into collaborative, meaningful practice that nurtures both individual growth and institutional change.
It acts as a guide for navigating the pressures of contemporary academia while maintaining one's authentic self through proven strategies such as visual journaling, collaborative filmmaking, and embodied creative practices. Each chapter combines theoretical insights with practical applications, offering both autoethnographic narratives and actionable case studies that demonstrate how making practices counter neoliberal academic pressures. Whether you're seeking to integrate creativity into research, enhance teaching through artistic approaches, or build sustainable practices for personal wellbeing, this book provides a roadmap. From soil-based art projects that foster ecological connection to comic-making strategies for international educators, it offers diverse pathways for reimagining your academic journey.
This would appeal to academics across all disciplines, researchers in educational wellbeing, and practitioners in arts and health fields. With this, one can transform isolated academic work into collaborative, meaningful practice that nurtures both individual growth and institutional change.
More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
1 Tables, black and white; 16 Halftones, black and white; 16 Illustrations, black and white
File size
11,14 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-62507-1 (9781040625071)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Narelle Lemon | Sharon McDonough | Mark Selkrig
Creating Wellbeing
The Role of Making Practices in Academic Contexts
Book
11/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€53.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Narelle Lemon | Sharon McDonough | Mark Selkrig
Creating Wellbeing
The Role of Making Practices in Academic Contexts
Book
11/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€207.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Narelle Lemon is a Vice Chancellor Professorial Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University, Australia, Lead of the Wellbeing and Education Research Community, and is an interdisciplinary scholar across arts, education, and positive psychology. She is the Director of Explore & Create Co.
Sharon McDonough is an Associate Professor in Teacher Education in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University, Australia. Sharon's research focus draws on socio-cultural theories of wellbeing and resilience to explore professional development for educators, initial teacher education, and how to support and advance wellbeing across a range of contexts.
Mark Selkrig is currently based at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. His research and scholarly work focus on the changing nature of educators' work, their identities, lived experiences, and how educators navigate the ecologies of their respective learning environments. He engages with digital and arts-informed methods in these research domains to probe the uneasy tensions and intersections that influence change, capacity building, and agency of individuals and communities.
Sharon McDonough is an Associate Professor in Teacher Education in the Institute of Education, Arts and Community at Federation University, Australia. Sharon's research focus draws on socio-cultural theories of wellbeing and resilience to explore professional development for educators, initial teacher education, and how to support and advance wellbeing across a range of contexts.
Mark Selkrig is currently based at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. His research and scholarly work focus on the changing nature of educators' work, their identities, lived experiences, and how educators navigate the ecologies of their respective learning environments. He engages with digital and arts-informed methods in these research domains to probe the uneasy tensions and intersections that influence change, capacity building, and agency of individuals and communities.
Content
Section 1: Foundations: Creative Practice as Wellbeing in Academia 1. A call for change: Creative and making practices as essential practices to support wellbeing and the transformative potential of education. Narelle Lemon, Sharon McDonough, and Mark Selkrig 2. Reviving the Creative Academic: Integrating the Creative Being and Values Flow Models to Promote Wellbeing in Higher Education Cedomir Ignjatovic, Katie Beresford, and Margaret L. Kern 3. Intersecting Identities and the Pracademic Paradigm Cheri Flewell-Smith 4. Comic-making as Wellbeing: Supporting International Students during Professional Experience Fiona Boylan and Karen Nociti Section 2: Embodied Knowledge: Sensory and Physical Dimensions of Making 5. Thinking Through the Ground: Art, Ecology, and Relational Wellbeing Cassandra Tytler 6. Exploring Experiences and Impacts of Creative Arts Therapies Catherine Oxworth 7. Embodied Connections Conversation Series: Women's Conversations in Landscape and Climate through Collaborative Nature-based Photographic Practices Alyson Agar 8. From Family Legacy to Care: An Autoethnographic Journey of Music and Memory Simone Marino Section 3: Relational Making: Collaborative and Community Approaches 9. Ex:Change - Validating Conversations about Waste and Sustainability through Craft Joanna Rucklidge and Wendy Ward 10. New Ways of Workshopping: Research-based Theatre and Collaborative Creativity for Wellbeing Richard Sallis, Chris Summers, and Prue Wales 11. Filmmaking 'With' as a Creative Process that Uses Relational Ideas of Care Catherine Gough-Brady 12. Providing a Voice: Using Creative Ethnographic Collaborative Methodologies to Explore and Represent Cultural Heritage in the Commonplace. Maxine Beuret Section 4: Identity and Transformation: Navigating Academic Life Through Making 13. Moving through Liminal Space: Visual Journaling as a Creative Ritual and Spiritual Practice Christopher M. Strickland and Jane E. Dalton 14. Creativity Under Constraint: The Academic Struggle and the Need for Systemic Reform Bronte van der Hoorn 15. Loki's Tail Karen Kenny 16. Navigating Academia with a Design Mindset: A Project of Ambiguity, Prototyping, and Failures
Linus Tan
Linus Tan
