Dr. Alisoun Neville
Crayons and Stuff Founder / Director / Creative Arts and Somatic Therapist
Dr. Alisoun Neville has learned through a combination of life experience and formal study to use creative expression and inquiry as powerful guides through some of life’s complex and difficult matters.
Alisoun's own processes of writing and other art-making have informed her commitment to use creativity, collaboration, and play for self-advocacy, discovery, self-expression, and healing.
Her life has been changed by the art-making of others, including in particular extraordinary fiction and life writing by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers. She was born on Wurundjeri land, with her deepest connections to Mt Toolebewong outside Healesville, and has recently moved to the beautiful Milowl / Phillip Island, and works on Boon Wurrung / Bunurong country here and across the Bass Coast.
Alisoun is based in the Cowes studio, from which she can see both adults and children, and is also available to offer sessions online to any location in Australia. She works regularly with Bass Coast College in San Remo and with Doveton College.
Following significant academic study (details below), Alisoun worked for almost 20 years in health and community services. This includes substantive work with, and a commitment to, Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, and the overlapping contexts of mental health, disability, women’s safety, and services for people impacted by imprisonment.
In 2016, Alisoun returned to study to complete her Masters of Therapeutic Arts Practice, with her placement and early practice working with women caught up in the criminal justice system.
Alisoun holds professional registration as a clinical member of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Association of Australia (PACFA) and is Deputy Convenor of PACFA's new College of Creative and Experiential Therapies. She is in her second year of supervised study with Somatic Experiencing Australia and incorporates this into her practice as a creative and experiential therapist.
Alisoun first launched Crayons and Stuff as her unique consulting practice, integrating her experience and training in the expressive arts with her traditional consulting and training skills. She has now re-launched Crayons and Stuff as the overarching business, enabling an expansion of arts therapy services through the employment and/or support of other practitioners, and further development of her personal model and vision for mental health and disability services and the creative arts therapies sector.
In particular, Crayons and Stuff aims to support and strengthen mental health practices that can respond more effectively to the impacts of our society and its systems. Work to date includes Alisoun's development of an NDIS training program to support increased access to arts and music therapists in the NDIS scheme. She has also been involved Activate Arts Therapy, a successful local campaign to raise awareness and secure funding for professional arts therapists in Victorian schools, and co-authored the campaign's submission into the Royal Commission into Mental Health.
This work is part of a bigger commitment to more creative opportunities and safer spaces for the neurodiverse and others with lived experiences who think there is something we can learn from what we have experienced and where more change is needed to be heard on our own terms.
Credentials
Qualifications
Masters in Therapeutic Arts Practice MIECAT 2018
Ph.D. (Law/English) La Trobe University 2006
Grad Dip Hum and Honours in English La Trobe University 2000
BA University of Melbourne 1993 Psychology and Criminology
Cert IV in Workplace Training and Education Accredited Online Training 2014
Practitioner Roles and Positions
Founder/Director Crayons and Stuff
Clinical Member of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Association of Australia
Member of SERV-Creative - South East Regional Victoria Mental Health Practitioners Network
On-site private practitioner at Our Lady Star of the Sea, Cowes Primary School, Bass Coast College San Remo and Doveton College
Deputy Convenor,and founding member of the College of Creative and Experiential Therapies, PACFA - 2022-2023
Member of Eve Wellness Collective - 2019-2023
Casual Teacher in the Masters of Therapeutic Arts Practice at MIECAT - 2022
Coordinating member of Activate Arts Therapy Campaign - 2020-21
Practitioner at Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre (for Djirra and Law and Advocacy Centre for Women) - 2018-19
Student Placement with Law and Advocacy Centre for Women - 2018
Volunteer: Very Special Kids - 2017
Consultancy and Training Skills
Arts-based / creative inquiry and training toolkit
Training and group facilitation
Program design and development
Policy and advocacy
Operations and quality practice
Research and evaluation
Business development
Recent projects:
Policy Paper & Campaign for implementation of the Good Spirit Good Life Tool for the GSGL Centre for Research Excellence, University of Western Australia
Development of Legal Services Practice Guide and Policy Practice Guide at Djirra
Presentations and Publications
'Experiencing and perceiving' (with K. Tudor) in B. Neville and K. Tudor Eco-Centred Therapy: Revisioning Person-Centred Psychology for a Living World, London: Routledge, 2023.
Exploring safety in context: Using arts-based inquiry for collective co-creation. Presented with Dr. Carla van Laar at the 14th International Conference of the World Association for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy & Counseling, Auckland, June 2021.
"Look again" - How can we see in new ways, with our words? Creative Mental Health Forum and Self-Care Retreat, Inverloch, May 2021.
The balancing act: Performing stories of our practice within systems of the state (with C. Van Laar) Journal of Creative Arts Therapy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2020, pp. 64-73.
Video interview on art therapy and mental health with Dr. van Laar. Activate arts therapy campaign. 2020.
Our multilingual bodies. Blog Post. 2019.
‘An isolation within: Cubillo v Commonwealth and the absence of value’ In B. Neville, D. Goonewardene, J. V. D’Cruz, P. Darby (eds) As Others See Us: The Values Debate in Australia, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008.
‘Hierarchies of knowledge in Cubillo v Commonwealth’. The Borderpolitics of Whiteness Conference. Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association and Macquarie University. Sydney, December 2006.
Classification, denial and the racial state: Cubillo v Commonwealth, Thesis (PhD), La Trobe University, 2005.
“Cubillo v Commonwealth: Classifying text and the violence of exclusion,” Macquarie Law Journal, vol. 5, no. 31, 2005, pp. 31-55.
"`The killing times are still with us': Readings of truth in Ginibi's ‘Haunted by the Past’." Race and Class: A Journal for Black and Third World Liberation, vol. 44, no. 1, 2002, pp. 124-129.
“Of law and place: Reading heterotopic spaces in Pascoe’s ‘Fox’, ‘Ruby-eyed Coucal’ and ‘Shark’,” Australian Feminist Law Journal, vol. 15, 2001, pp. 55-79.