ABSTRACT

This volume focuses on individual and collective practices of creativity, embodiment and movement as acts of self-care and wellbeing.

Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education positions creative expression as an important act for professionals working in higher education, as a way to connect, communicate, practice activism or simply slow down. Through examples as diverse as movement through dance and exercise, expression through drawing, writing or singing and creating objects with one’s hands, the authors share how individual and collective acts of creativity and movement enhance, support and embrace wellbeing, offering guidance to the reader on how such creative expression can be adopted as self-care practice. This book highlights how connection to hand, body, voice and mind has been imperative in this process for expression, fl ow and engagement with self and wellbeing practices.

Self-care and wellbeing are complex at the best of times. In higher education, these are actions that are constantly being grappled with personally, collectively and systematically. Designed to support readers working in higher education, this book will also be of great interest to professionals and researchers.

chapter 1|18 pages

Poetic inquiry

Transformational representations of wellbeing and self-care in higher education

section Section 1|52 pages

Making and creating as a representation of self-care

section Section 2|48 pages

Collaborative expression, embodiment, and the power of relationships

chapter 5|14 pages

Stepping off the edge

Circles of connection and creativity for wellbeing in the academy

chapter 6|18 pages

Running, writing, resilience

A self-study of collaborative self-care among women faculty

chapter 7|14 pages

Making mindful moments

Made artefacts as a form of data visualisation to monitor and respond to self-care and wellbeing

section Section 3|63 pages

Creative practice as interruption

chapter 10|29 pages

Self-care in the time of crisis

An a/r/tographic conversation to explore self-care as academics that took an unexpected turn

section Section 4|43 pages

Mind, body, and movement as acts of self-care

chapter 11|14 pages

Kia kōrero te tinana katoa (The whole body must speak)

Māori early-career academics and performing one's cultural self for hauora

chapter 12|12 pages

Cycling as a form of self-care

Incorporating and sustaining purposeful movement practices to support wellbeing

chapter 13|15 pages

Anatomy of a burnout

Walking, reading and journal writing as practices of self-care to support intellectual life