Alisoun Neville is an arts therapist based in Melbourne, Australia. She opened her private practice in early 2019, supported by the recognition of arts therapy under the new National Disability Insurance Scheme and through partnerships with legal services to work with women who are incarcerated. Her therapeutic practice is new, but builds on over 15 years’ experience in policy, advocacy, training and program development across health, legal, public and community services sectors. This includes substantive work with, and a commitment to, Aboriginal community controlled organisations, and the overlapping contexts of mental health, disability, women’s safety and services for people impacted by imprisonment. Alisoun’s academic background is multidisciplinary, and includes an interdisciplinary PhD in 2005 in which she explored how “fictional” and “life writing” texts with Indigenous voices and world-views were actively contesting the constructions of stolen generations history that were enabled through the law. A broader commitment to pursuing a better world through both traditional and creative forms led her most recently to her Masters in Therapeutic Arts Practice and her developing experience in multimodal/expressive arts therapy.

Alisoun is joined today by special guest Dr. Carla van Laar, a painter and arts therapist with decades of experience working with people and the arts for wellbeing in community, justice, health, education and international disaster relief contexts. Her most recent book is based on her doctoral research “Seeing her Stories” and continues the mission to make subjugated stories visible through art. She insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnected ness of life and is an agent of social change.