Following the success of the Big Anxiety festivals in Naarm/Melbourne and Meanjin/Brisbane in 2022, The Big Anxiety Research Centre [BARC] hosted a 2-week Open Studio at the UNSW  Kensington Campus in October. The Open Studio presents BARC’s latest new creative tools and Virtual Reality experiences for working with trauma and emotional experience – along with radically new lived experience-led programs for addressing mental health in communities.

BARC’s trauma responsive approach focuses on collaborative design to create options for action – reframing mental health through cultural practice.

We are pioneers of Experience Visualisation, creating immersive media to advance understanding of both internal experience, and the affordances and power relations that facilitate or shut down options for action. Our programs are dedicated to transforming trauma.