Back in 2020/2021 I was incredibly lucky to work with an amazing creative team made up of people from Flinders (Steph, Jess, Chris) and an external design agency, Mango Chutney, to build a mental health focused campaign called the Good Vibes Experiment.
At the core of the campaign is an activity book that introduces readers to different wellbeing tactics (activities that promote positive mental health and wellbeing) and encourages them to experiment with adding some to their everyday life.
The goal is to expand the public conversation around mental health, so it isn’t just limited to discussing mental illness and seeking mental health care. To be clear, mental illness is an incredibly important topic to be discussing in the broader community and I am not suggesting that should change. But that conversation can be further enhanced by discussing how we build positive mental health. I want people to have the knowledge and tools for tackling suffering as well as bringing positive experiences into their life.
Working on this campaign meant drawing on similar passions that drive Visualising Mental Health – namely that desire to communicate actionable mental health insights through visual arts and communication design. I’m not particularly artistic but love the chance to explore using different mediums and visual imagery to communicate concepts from my discipline.
The Activity Book is still distributed to students at Flinders and all the visual materials (logos, designs etc) have been made freely accessible to anyone who would like to do a similar project in their own setting.
I’m really hoping that I get to do a second version of the Activity Book at some point in time.
Dr Gareth Furber 