ACCESS OUR CREATIVITY & HEALING MATER CLASSES via the two options – then you will receive all the details you need. 

SPECIAL MEMBERSHIP OFFER – We are offering our Creative Mama annual membership with all the fabulous member benefits PLUS access to these 12 monthly mater classes for only $99.

BUY ONE GIFT ONE – For each annual membership you buy we will gift one to a mother from the Mums 4 Refugees community.

PICK & CHOOSE – Join individual mater classes for $25 each.

This expansive Mater Class will feature Heide Hatry, a New York City and Berlin based German neo-conceptual artist, curator and editor. Her work, often either body-related or employing animal flesh and organs, has aroused controversy and has been considered horrific, repulsive or sensationalist by some critics, while others have hailed her as an “imaginative provocateur”, “a force of nature…, an artist and a humanist who is making a selfless contribution to life”. 

Heide grew up on a pig farm in the south of Germany. She left home at the age of 15 to enroll in a sports school. She studied art at various German art schools and art history at the University of Heidelberg. She taught at a private art school for 15 years while simultaneously conducting an international business as an antiquarian bookseller.

Since moving to New York in 2003 she has curated numerous exhibitions and has shown her own work at museums and galleries around the world. She has produced about 200 artist’s books and edited more than two dozen books and art catalogues. Her book Skin was published by Kehrer, Heidelberg, in 2005, Heads and Tales and Not a Rose by Charta, Milan/New York in 2009 and 2012 and Icons in Ash by Station Hill Press, Barrytown, NY in 2017.

This enlightening Mater Class features Susan Moylan-Coombs, founding director of the Gaimaragal Group. The company was established to create a new story of connection and wellbeing for all Australians.

Their aim is to facilitate the voice for indigenous Elders in the contemporary social space, empower youth to realise their full potential, and provide two-way cultural translation to bring individuals and communities together

Susan’s ancestry is Woolwonga and Gurindji from the Northern Territory. She has extensive experience working with First Australian communities nationally and internationally, with specific expertise in community consultation, empowerment and the facilitation of voice and storytelling.  Susan previously held the positions of Executive Producer ABC’s Indigenous Programs Unit and Head of Production, NITV a division of SBS.

Today, Susan uses her expertise to work with mainstream organisations and communities in the provision of cultural competency and immersion sessions as well as social planning processes. Susan is part of the group known as the Stolen Generations and has lived experience of the trauma associated with removal, loss, dispossession and disconnection.

This enlightening Mater Class features Gabbi Lancaster, an artist living in Sydney, Australia, with an art making practice spanning 35 years.

Her work is an expression of her love for nature. Gabbi studied figurative art and anatomy at The Paddington Art School. After traveling and living overseas, studying and teaching life drawing in Barcelona, Gabbi returned to Sydney and worked as a tutor at The Paddington Art School. A deep and lasting interest in the learning process was sparked while teaching life drawing there and at Art for Hearts Sake.

For nearly 30 years Gabbi has been developing art and creativity programs for children and adults, supporting them to connect with their own creativity and artistic freedom. She has worked with thousands of people and has nurtured their transformative journeys.

In 2020 Art of Flow – Explorations in Paint & Creativity with adults, moved from face to face workshops to an online format. Gabbi strives to create an environment in Art of Flow that will support each participant and their unique creative process through intuitive painting and open ended art exercises. Her intention is to be completely open and to freely spread the positive effect that living creatively, and regularly accessing a flow state, can have on us. Gabbi frequently exhibits in group shows and has had solo exhibitions in Sydney. She’s been a finalist in various art prizes and her work is held in private collections in Australia, Europe and USA.

This enlightening Mater Class features Eliza Hull, a contemporary musician, disability advocate and writer based in regional Victoria. Her music has been used in ABC ‘The Heights’ and American TV shows ‘Awkward, ‘Teen Wolf’
and ‘Saving Hope,’ Her music has been played on radio nationally and internationally including on ABC, RN, BBC and triple j. She has toured nationally and internationally, performing at The Natural History Museum in London and Central Park in New York, touring Germany and Turkey and supporting Australian artists such as Mia Dyson, Katie Noonan and Husky. She has released three EP’s and a debut album ‘The Bones of Us’ and is currently working on a new EP due out in 2022 produced by John Castle.

Eliza is a proud disabled woman, with a physical disability ‘Charcot Marie Tooth.’ She has produced articles and audio pieces for triple j and double j shining a light on Australian musicians with disability and reports as a freelancer for ABC News on disability issues. She has advised organisations such as APRA, Arena Theatre, Music Victoria, Play School (ABC) and Creative Victoria in disability. Additionally, she’s been a guest speaker at Changes, Accessible Arts, Brunswick Music Festival, DARU and The Human Rights Convention ‘Free and Equal.’ Eliza recently wrote and produced the TV episode ‘And then something changed’ for ABC Kids, the episode is about the experience of being a child with disability; she was also the creator of ‘We’ve Got This’ an audio series about parenting with disability for the ABC, which is now being turned into a book published through Black Inc. She was also part of the book ‘Growing up disabled in Australia.’

Recently she created and curated ‘Accessible All Areas’ as part of Iso-laid Festival where she featured Disabled and d/Deaf artists from around the world. The streamed show was accessible for d/Deaf and disabled audiences worldwide and has had over 50k views. She has recently
been nominated for the Music Victoria ‘Amplify’ award, Brenda Gabe Leadership award and the National Disability Award.

Eliza is currently the Artistic Associate and Access and Inclusion coordinator at Arena Theatre company, she is working on ‘BAAI’ a film and live performance with the Bendigo South Sudanese community. She has been a music facilitator for many years within Parkville Youth Justice Centre, DFATS, Salvation Army and St Kilda Youth Centre, and is a regular performer and
creator within theatre company ‘Create A’ which features performers with disability.

This enlightening Mater Class features Catriona Pollard. She is an international speaker, trainer and TEDx presenter, founder and director of innovative PR agency CP Communications, author as well as an accomplished fibre artist who runs creativity and basketry workshops at The Art of Weaving for individuals and groups plus online courses at the School of Basketry. 

This expansive Mater Class will feature Susie Orbach, celebrated psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and co-founder of The Women’s Therapy Centre in London (1976) and The WTCI in New York (1981).

She is the author of many books. Her most recent In Therapy: The Unfolding Story is an expanded edition of In Therapy (an annotated version of the BBC series listened to live by 2 million people). Her first book Fat is a Feminist Issue has been continuously in print since 1978. Bodies (which won the APA Psychology of Women’s Book Prize in 2009) was updated in 2019.

She is the recipient of the Inaugural British Psychoanalytic Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 2019. 

She continues to help many individuals and couples from her practice in London.

Dr McFerran has also contributed to the development of an assessment tool for increasing young people’s conscious and intentional uses of music. Her music therapy research spans school, community and hospital based practices with young people incorporating a range of music strategies such as song writing, improvisation, performances and music sharing. She is committed to building healthy music cultures in schools that promote wellbeing and connectedness, as well as providing direct therapy services for young people who wish to work towards personal and interpersonal change and growth.

Professor McFerran has published her research in international and interdisciplinary refereed journals and has contributed numerous case studies and practice reflections to edited books, as well as sole authoring her first text on ‘Adolescents, Music and Music Therapy’ in 2010 (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) and her second on ‘Building Music Cultures in Schools‘ in 2014 (Barcelona Publications). She is also an Editor of VOICES: A world forum for music therapy and sits on Editorial Boards of the Australian and Nordic Journals of Music Therapy, as well as Music Therapy Today, and Social Work with Groups.

Professor McFerran is Head of the Masters in Music Therapy by Coursework program and Director of the National Music Therapy Research Unit where she supervises a range of projects exploring music and youth. She is currently Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of the VCA&MCM, and Associate Director (Research) at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

This expansive Mater Class will feature Dr Carla Van Laar, a painter and therapeutic arts practitioner from Australia,  with over 25 years’ experience working with people and the arts for health and well-being in community organisations, justice, health and education contexts.

Carla’s first book “Bereaved Mother’s Heart” was published in 2007 and broke social taboos about maternal grief. From 2008-18 she established and ran an independent art therapy studio and gallery in Melbourne.

Carla’s book “Seeing her stories” presents her doctoral research into making unseen stories visible through art, continuing the mission to make women’s stories visible, through art.

Carla has lectured and supervised Art Therapy students at RMIT, MIECAT and currently the IKON Institute. She is a practicing artist and in 2018 received an Artist Fellowship at RMIT’s creative research lab, “Creative Agency”. She insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnectedness of all life and is an agent of social change.

This expansive Mater Class will feature  Captain Sumisha Shankar, is considered one of India’s modern day Aesthetes, bringing to life ancient knowledge of classical Indian Aesthetics, moving us beyond beauty as the subject of outer observation to an inner subjective perception, translating the concept into a deeper-thinking dialogue that engages ancient wisdoms and makes them relevant for modern times.

Once a Captain in the Indian Army, now she is a highly sought-after wellness lecturer and teacher who uses dance, Indian Aesthetics and yoga as her key healing succors. She has over a decade of experience in meditation, spiritual counselling, yoga and dance therapy. She is the founder of a new age experiential training system, Antardhwani, that creates and shares multi-disciplinary teachings through research & experiential learning, and where art meets science.

Sumisha has travelled with her workshops to countries like South Africa, Netherlands, Suriname, Mauritius and Trinidad & Tobago; and has worked with prestigious organisations like IBM, Mauritius Police, Jaguar, JLT and Mercedes Benz to name few. She is a +900 RYT Advanced Ashtanga Yoga Teacher and a QCI certified Yoga professional. She has a Master’s degree in Indian Classical Dance (Kathak), Diploma In Indian Aesthetics from Mumbai University and has an illustrious foundation from Miranda House, Delhi University. She is currently a visiting faculty for the Advanced Teacher’s Training course at 100 year old Yoga Institute, Santacruz, Mumbai, India. She has been featured in Netflix, VOGUE, ndia Today, Femina,TOI, Hindustan times, Deccan Chronicle & NDTV.