Mrs Karin Mackay

I completed my  initial Bachelor of Teaching from the University of Western Sydney and have worked in K-12 schools across NSW in the Western Sydney and Hunter Valley Regions. I have considerable experience working with diverse youth and women’s groups using creative arts processes and community festivals to raise awareness of social justice and ecological issues for cultural wellbeing.

Karin has written and delivered numerous creative arts courses and published in the areas of women, spirituality, ecology and the arts in online articles, poems, newsletters and blogs. Karin is in the final stages of her Doctoral studies with The Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, examining how creative cultural practice influences women’s wellbeing in relation to land and kin. She has presented her work on the intersection of cultural wellbeing, story, art and place domestically and internationally, publishing her first academic article titled Reclaiming the Sacred: A Festival Experience as a Response to Globalisation  in 2011 and her forthcoming  article  2013 titled Art as a Connection to the Divine in Women’s Lives: Cultural Wellbeing through Creative Process. Karin has also been privileged to work with Professor Margaret Somerville, a leader in place pedagogies, The Office of Environment and Heritage and The United Nations Regional Centre for Excellence Greater western Sydney on projects investigating connection to place and sustainable practice.

She is delighted to have been recently appointed to a Career Development Fellowship position in the School of Education where her undergraduate learning began and where she now enjoys teaching students in the areas of Diversity, Social Justice and Equity, Education for Sustainability and Learning and Creativity.

This information has been contributed by Mrs Mackay.