The Cairns Institute and Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine have the pleasure of inviting you to two Free public events to be held in conjunction with the Creating Futures 2015 Conference (www.cf15.conorg.com.au) in Cairns, Queensland.

Both will be held at the Shangri La Hotel (http://www.shangri-la.com/cairns/shangrila/) on Wednesday, May 13, 2015 and are open to the public.

1) 1.45pm to 3.15pm – Two lectures chaired by Melissa Sweet (Croakey)

1.45pm Nicholas Rothwell: "Outsider art and the creative spirit” A lecture presenting a personal perspective on outsider art-making, examining its special place in the contemporary cultural landscape and tracing the suggestive parallels between outsider creativity and the contemporary Australian Aboriginal art movement.

2.30pm Theo Tremblay: “Boundary riders” Since 1984 Theo Tremblay has been working with Aboriginal and Islander artists helping to promote shared learning through the arts; expressing concerns of country, culture and the ‘colonial conundrum’. His illustrated talk will feature the artists he mentors as apprentices. “Boundary riders”, as he refers to them, “are gaining confidence and respect by sharing their culture stories, anecdotes, confessions and aspirations with the broader community through printmaking – and other shared collaborative activities.”

2) 7.00pm to 8.30pm “Bridging gaps: different contexts different solutions?”

In this public forum facilitated by Melissa Sweet, renowned researcher and writer in the area of global mental health, Vikram Patel, will consider lessons from his experiences over two decades in promoting the importance and realisation of mental health as a core component of global health in pursuing equity in health worldwide, and in eliminating the discrimination and exclusion of people suffering from mental disorders in economically disadvantaged societies. In Australia, an economically privileged society with robust social and health sectors, disadvantage, discrimination and exclusion are pervasive across remote Indigenous Australia and compounded for those with mental health and other disabilities. Two Aboriginal Australians, politician Alison Anderson and psychiatrist Marshall Watson will reflect on the salience of those experiences and lessons to the political, service and social landscape of remote Indigenous Australia.

Biographies of speakers, in alphabetical order:

Alison Anderson was born in Haasts Bluff and grew up in a number of remote communities, including Hermannsburg and . A strong community person, fluent in several Aboriginal languages, Alison has spent her life trying to improve the conditions of people living in Central Australia. Alison served on the Aboriginal Development Commission and as an ATSIC Commissioner. Alison has also been a senior member of a number of influential boards. In 2004 Alison was selected by the Howard Government to represent Central Australia on the Round Table discussions on Aboriginal matters. Since 2005, Alison has served the Namatjira Electorate (formerly the MacDonnell Electorate) as a Member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. During that time, she has held Ministries in both Labor and Country Liberal Governments. She is currently an Independent Member.

Vikram Patel is a Professor of International Mental Health and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK). He is the Joint Director of the School’s Centre for Global Mental Health (www.centreforglobalmentalhealth.org) and Honorary Director of the Public Health Foundation of India’s Centre for Mental Health. He is a co-founder of Sangath, a community based NGO in India (www.sangath.com). He is a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences and serves on the WHO’s Expert Advisory Group for Mental Health and the Mental Health Policy Group of the Government of India. His book Where There Is No Psychiatrist (2003) has become a widely used manual for community mental health in developing countries. He is based in Goa and New Delhi, India.

Nicolas Rothwell was educated in Europe and was a classical scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. In the 1980s and early 1990s he was a foreign correspondent for The Australian and reported from the Americas, the Pacific and Western and Eastern Europe, latterly during the Yugoslav conflict. Since returning to live in Australia in the 1990s he has been a columnist with The Australian providing analysis of Indigenous affairs for which he won the 2006 Walkley Journalist Award. Rothwell is also known for his writings on Aboriginal and outsider art and is the author of six books, the last of which was, Belomor, which was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award in 2014.

Melissa Sweet is an independent public health journalist and author, the founder of the public health blog Croakey, and an avid tweeter. She chairs the Public Interest Journalism Foundation and has an honorary appointment as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra, researching a long-form work of journalism around Indigenous health and history.

Theo Tremblay Boston Museum School and Oxford University educated, Tremblay was a founding member of the Oxford Printmakers Co-op and Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne. Under the direction of print masters, Udo Sellbach, Jörg Schmeisser and Gillian Mann he taught drawing and printmaking at the Canberra School of Art from 1981, creating residencies for Indigenous artists including Banduk Marika, England Bangala, Johnny Bulun Bulun, Bede Tungatalum, Kevin Gilbert, Treahna Hamm, Arone Meeks, Sadie Singer, Denis Nona, Pooaraar and Jimmy Pike which led to two important exhibitions,‘Groundworks’ at the ANU, then ‘New Tracks Old Land’, travelling across the USA and Australia in association with Massachusetts College of Art, Australia Council and Coo-ee gallery, Sydney. After residencies at Northern Territory University (CDU), Ramingining and Chiang Mai University, he was a master printer at Studio One Inc., ACT with Basil Hall from 1993-1997. He was invited to head the Indigenous Visual Arts Studies at Cairns TAFE (2003-2008). He now runs his own press, Editions Tremblay NFP and Canopy Art Centre Gallery, Cairns with partner Paloma Ramos. Over 30 years they have helped raise over 5 million dollars, directly benefitting Indigenous artists and arts organizations through printmaking activities.

Marshall Watson is a descendant of the Noongar people of the South West of WA. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, having completed advanced training in both child and adolescent and forensic psychiatry in 2014. He is currently working as a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist in SA. Marshall currently sits on the Youth Justice Board of WA and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Advisory Group. His area of interest is juvenile offending in the context of complex trauma.

To register please visit https://alumni.jcu.edu.au/CF15Public

To find out more about Creating Futures conference, please visit http://cf15.conorg.com.au/