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ART THERAPIST: Tanja Johnston Tanja Johnston is a multidisciplinary artist, arts educator and art therapist specialising in supporting current and former members of the ADF, veterans, emergency service personnel and families, facilitating Arts based engagement and recovery programs. Tanja is the partner of a veteran, daughter and granddaughter of veterans. She works across educational, clinical, defence and veteran community (ESO & VSO) settings. Tanja is the foundation Visual Arts Lead of the recently developed ADF Arts for Recovery, Resilience, Teamwork and Skills (ARRTS) Program, delivering arts workshops as a rehabilitative tool for wounded, injured and ill veterans. Tanja is the Head of Arts Programs at the Australian National Veterans Arts Museum. (Source: ANVAM)
Since uni, I've been a secondary school teacher and also went on to do a Master of Art Therapy [La Trobe University]. One of the real benefits of doing my degree at ACU was that we could learn across three different streams. For me it was visual art, English, and religious education. I've been very employable and I've had many diverse teaching opportunities. My partner is in the Army, so we've moved around the country. Being a teacher has put me in interesting communities and I've worked in both public and independent schools. At ACU we were very close to the Indigenous unit and as young educators we worked a lot with them. So in Darwin, I taught in an Indigenous studies unit. Part of the work involved going out to remote communities to work with students in places like Maningrida and Gove, which was fantastic. Then we moved to Sydney where I worked at St Aloysius College, right on Sydney Harbour. It was quite a culture shock! Now I also work with the veteran community, returned service personnel, and current military members serving in the army, navy and air force. Three years ago, my husband and I started a charity, ANVAM, the Australian National Veterans Art Museum, utilising his experience as a veteran and mine as an art teacher. We've found art is intrinsically therapeutic. Art therapy has a very long history going back to WWI. Returned servicemen were using it when they came back from war. We have a lot of veterans who became famous artists - Sidney Nolan, for example.
I'm still teaching art and English
at a number of different high schools. Keeping the students engaged is a big
challenge. I think we've lost a lot of those grass-roots skills - now we've
got a screen in front of us, we're not learning how to problem solve. Art
allows us to do that."
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