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what I mean when I talk about edu-tainment. If you can change
can do the same — it puts power and information in the hands of the person, not the system. You’re known for bringing humour, creativity, and activism into your work. What’s the role of art in mental health? Huge. We underestimate the power of emotion, play, and story in health. I’ve seen interactive theatre change people’s minds faster than any factsheet. I’ve seen performers with lived experience light up rooms and normalise conversations that were taboo an hour earlier. You reach, engage, and change the minds of more people if you entertain them than you could ever reach with a TV scare campaign or billboard advert. People only change because they want to — not because you make them. They switch off if they think you’re telling them what to do but if they can see themselves reflected in a story it can spark a complete epiphany. Nobody wants to turn up to hear a bureaucrat speak, but a red-carpet film opening invite? They will be lining up. We partnered with the world’s second biggest arts festival to support lived experience performers who wanted to share stories of mental health, grief, suicide, healing through theatre, music, dance, you name it. In two years we supported over 40 shows, 18,000+ audience members, and some of the most profound shifts I’ve seen. Audience feedback that said things like “I finally understood my sister” or “I’ve never laughed so hard about grief.” Nothing preaches like a song, nothing teaches like a laugh. That’s
someone’s mind and make them snort-laugh at the same time, you’ve got something powerful. You’re part of UNICEF’s Digital Mental Health Expert Network and deputy chair of the eMental Health International
Collaborative. What are you seeing globally? And how does that relate to your work in South Australia? There’s a lot of excitement and a lot of noise. On one hand, we’ve
got brilliant tools emerging: AI chatbots, mood trackers,
immersive VR therapy, gamified CBT. On the other, we’ve got a Wild West of apps with zero clinical oversight, no lived experience advisory and a tonne of cultural mismatch. The most promising stuff is co-designed, peer-tested, and transparent. It needs to be local, tailored, and practical. Tools that empower, not pathologise their users. Tools that understand that a rural teen in Rwanda doesn’t need a US-based AI telling them to find their school counsellor, when they don’t have one.
My favourite change- making tools are ones that support and connect people to become change makers within their own spheres of influence, in communities we can’t reach with traditional methods. It’s best done as a mixture of face-to-face connection and digital support. Face-
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