HEAD2ART is a visual dialogue between researcher and participants, exploring how young people develop wellbeing through museum-based creative engagement. This arts-based PhD exhibition emerges from partnerships with Joanna Davies (Visual Arts and Public Programs Leader, Lake Macquarie City Council) and Byron Williams (headspace Newcastle), featuring artworks by students from Lake Macquarie High School.

The gallery holds two connected spaces. Bezzina’s researcher-response works, time-based charcoal animations and erasure drawings, are in visual conversation with student pieces from three eight-week museum-based pilots: check-in drawings and works made in response to gallery exhibitions, documenting how they found calm through safe, scaffolded creative freedom.

What emerges when young people, drawing on the innate therapeutic capacity of the museum, gain agency over their creative choices and feel held, seen and heard?

Exhibition runs: 29th July - 29th August 2026

Gallery hours:
Wed - Fri 10am - 5pm
Saturday: 12pm - 4pm

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HEAD2ART was partially funded by the NSW Government’s Children and Young People Wellbeing Recovery Initiative Grant and the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.