Creativity,health and arts advocacy

Creativity is popularly related to innovation and new ideas. This invention‐cognition view of creativity is too narrow a concept for artistic creativity. Artistic creation is also about reproducing traditions and emotional (“affective”) processes. Widespread use of the popular invention‐cognition view of creativity in arts advocacy obscures wider dimensions of artistic creativity. This article focuses attention on the affective dimension of artistic creation. It surveys “arts therapy” literature and investigates how lessons of this literature can be used to improve the persuasiveness of arts advocacy arguments that appeal to the concept of creativity.     

The Iranian Diaspora in Sydney: Migration Experience of Recent Iranian Immigrants

Recent research has found that discrimination against Islam and Muslims is deeply rooted in Australia. This report explores whether or how recent Iranian migrants have experienced racism, discrimination, or Islamaphobia in Sydney. These questions are explored by focusing on their experiences and issues regarding their making of new lives in Australia. This article suggests that recent Iranian migrants are experiencing far less discrimination than other Muslim diasporas in Sydney. Concluding that despite recent reports by some researchers grouping various Muslim populations together as regards Islamaphobia, there is a necessity for investigating discrimination, stereotyping, and Islamaphobia against particular diasporas to determine the needs of the Muslim population at large.     

‘Against the Tide’

This paper is an exploration of the attitudes and policies of key Australian ministers and officials towards decolonisation in the South Pacific through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Until the late 1960s, Australian governments generally favoured a very slow pace of decolonisation for the region, feared that many territories would never make viable nation-states and actively considered the bringing together of some of the colonial territories into larger entities. Consequently, for much of the 1960s Australian governments were engaged in the ultimately fruitless task of holding back the tide of decolonisation as it swept into the South Pacific.