SPEAKER

Feifei Liao, Co-founder and Managing Director at Story is Connection; Project Officer at Whittlesea International Student Wellbeing Hub; Mental Health Speaker at Batyr; Contemporary dancer; Founder of Feifei Curiosity; and Recovery Educator at Discovery College

Topic

The session will provide an overview of innovative ways of leveraging storytelling, arts and lived experience to explore mental health challenges multicultural communities face and support them to navigate their own journey for prevention and recovery. Feifei will share her lived experience in mental health, unpack some stories of international students dealing with mental health, and reflect on some gaps between mental health service providers and the students. The session will briefly showcase some creative projects co-designed with multicultural communities who have lived experience in mental health and artists that achieved to improve our understanding of specific challenges they have and paved accessible therapeutic pathways. Some artistic practices involved include theatre, film, dance, poetry and storytelling meditation.

About the speaker

Feifei Liao is the co-founder and managing director of the Not-for-Profit Organisation ‘Story is Connection,’ focusing on amplifying the authentic voice of international students and building their capacity through theatre and film productions. As the project officer of the Whittlesea International Student Wellbeing Hub at the City of Whittlesea, she has been co-designing with international students to deliver various activities to support their wellbeing during the pandemic. She is a speaker from Batyr, sharing her lived experience of mental health with young people.

She has worked for multicultural communities for more than a decade across universities, not-for-profit organisations, local councils and the state government. She is passionate about inspiring individuals to live life fully through intersectional, strength-based, co-design and grassroots approaches.

Eligibility

VTMH seminars are open to individuals, from all disciplines and working in all sectors, who are based in Australia and interested in diversity and mental health.