PODCAST · society
Creating Space Project
by Ruth Nelson
In the Creating Space Project, Ruth Nelson asks women to share a moment from their lives. The moment is used to uncover their personal values and beliefs. From ordinary women, come stories that are real and inspiring.
Episodes
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The Art of Authenticity
Do you ever feel like who you are on the inside is different to the way you perform for other people on the outside? You should listen to this episode. M did beautifully moving artwork for a journal article that I was part of, called Barometers of the City. Published in Human Arenas, it is...
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People Not Gender
When is about people not gender? Sahra and Ruth explore patriarchy as a system of oppression that affects all genders. Far from experts on the matter, we are two psychologists sitting with self-doubt and the discomfort of critically examining what it is that we value, and how we bring that into a...
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Asylum Seekers on PNG
Trillions of dollars have been spent by the Australian government detaining asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea for six years. It would be far better governance to bring about an end to this situation. Cathy McGowan is the former Independent member for Indi, in rural Victoria. She talks to the...
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Feminism and Counselling
The Creating Space Project is currently exploring feminist psychology and intersectionality, through asking listeners the question "What would you ask a feminist psychologist?" In this episode, Sahra O'Doherty and Ruth Nelson talk about Tanya's question regarding how you weave feminism into...
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Patriarchy and mental health
What would you ask a feminist psychologist? Ruth Nelson and Sahra O'Doherty respond to Jess's question about the effect of patriarchy on women's mental health, and how many problems stem from inequality. "I should look good." Ruth and Sahra explore the ways feminist values inform their psychology...
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Uncomfortable Feelings
It's very hard to find the words, "I have experienced this." What brings people into counselling? The Creating Space Project talks about therapy and mental health with psychologist Sahra O'Doherty. People can spend a lot of time squishing uncomfortable feelings back down, and get worried that if...
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Ballot Boxes and Witness K
"I find it very hard to accept that Australia's national interest is about putting security listening devices of the walls of our poorest, nearest neighbour." This is an interview about espionage, exploitation and politics. Elizabeth Biok is a lawyer and member of the International Commission of...
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Cultivating Openness
Cherie Heggie is wonderful. She sees the world with an openness and compassion that many of us just can't seem to attain. She declared as a Bahá'í in 2015 and what drew her to the faith is its belief that all the major religions of the world are from God. In her life, she has found no difference...
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Midwifery
Australia has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. That is amazing and a credit to our public health system. And, of the people who give birth in Australia, one in three experience it as a traumatic event. Grace Jeffery is a student midwife. She talks to the Creating Space…
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Kai Therapy
This is a beautiful, relaxing, bilingual conversation between guest interviewer, Gavin, professional interpreter, Sajsajee, and naturopath, Jik. Jik is a naturopath. She practices Kai Therapy. With her husband, she has established an organic city farm in the middle of Bangkok. Their hope is to...
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Kayakiri
Jaeb is a woman of vision, as well as extraordinary humility. "If I know anything, it's that I know nothing." When Jaeb and her husband first purchased land in central Thailand, the soil was so degraded by monocrop farming and heavy use of chemical fertilisers, it was like rock. They started...
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Muck In and Help
"Where are you getting the next lot of food?" And he just shrugged his shoulders. Ev Van Bo and her husband packed up their caravan for a trip around Australia. They thought that perhaps, on the way, they should stop to help a farmer. So they contacted the Country Women's Australia and were put…
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Back on Country
Kim is a Joondoburri Salt-Water woman from Yirin, the traditional name of Bribie Island, South East Queensland. She found out at the age of 21 that she is Aboriginal. As a child, Kim's father was sent to a boys' home to learn Western ways, his mother having been persuaded that this was in his…
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Wisdom of a Shaman
"I am a link between my father and my ancestors, the Incas, and knowledge formed thousands of years ago." The daughter of a Shaman, Julia has just released a book of her father's stories. Abuelito tells the tales of boyhood adventures with Eduardo Paez's grandfather in the foothills of Ecuador,...
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Appreciating Rain
Kate is a farmer in outback NSW. She loves farming and she loves her land. Her cattle wander the paddocks in peace, in view of the Warrumbungles. "Anything that's had a happy life is good. One bad day and that's the day they're on the truck." At the moment, keeping the cattle alive is hard. Kate...
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Cattle Yards
Kim works in town during the week and on the family farm on weekends. Her family are trying to keep some of their cattle alive during the drought. Resilience is a complicated business. It is the quality of bouncing back, surviving or thriving, and is revealed in hard times. Kim is the embodiment…
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Family
Amid the bustle and kindness of the Baradine Country Women's Association hall, Isabelle took time away from volunteering to talk to the Creating Space Project. Isabelle's mum, Julia, tells a story about running away to her grandmother's house whenever she needed a break. Isabelle, confident and...
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Fourth Generation
"I am the fourth generation of incredibly strong women." When Julia was four years old, she was run over by the family car and pronounced dead. Somehow, she was revived and recovered from the incident without lasting harm. Julia Baird is the daughter of Nea Worrell, the amazing woman integral to...
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Drought Pantry
The Baradine Country Women's Association is 90 years old. At the moment, its hall is full of supplies and vouchers, donated from around NSW and Queensland to support farmers and to try and keep the local shops alive. Nea Worrell, part of a family with five generations in the CWA, talks to the...
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Human Connection
When you interview someone at the Risk and Dare youth justice conference, held in a high school, it's tough finding a quiet spot, especially when you only have 10 minutes... Elise talks about being moved by the story of two women who arrived in Australia as refugees. "The refugees I've…
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Risk and Dare
Christiane Nakhle and I are at Risk and Dare, a justice conference for young people from across Australia. She talks about homelessness, and young people being vehicles for justice. Women are the most significant proportion of homeless people in Australia, due to domestic violence and lack of...
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Diversity Within
Boundaries and being other. These are concepts that interest me greatly. So there was a wonderful synchronicity to having a conversation with Celina McEwen. This is the story of the meeting of Celina's parents, a French woman and a man from the West Indies. As well as being the story of the...
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Sporange
Politics dressed up as the production of spores. Olivia reads a poem written by herself and a friend, Marcus. Then the other young poets of the Spark Youth Theatre respond to it. It's witty and clever, and the conversation does not disappoint either. I loved interviewing these young poets....
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My Mind and the Page
"I feel too much, like it's more than I can hold, and I will break" Seb is fourteen years old, enormously articulate, and very insightful. He reads us a poem. Then Gabe Journey Jones and the Spark Youth Theatre respond. They talk about many things, including being bullied and feeling down about...
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Baba Yaga
This is the first of three interviews that I enjoyed enormously (I enjoy all of my interviews, to be honest, but this one was something else again). I got to talk to the young poets from the Spark Youth Theatre. Each took a turn reading a poem, and then the rest of us, including facilitator Gabe...
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Mindful of Death
Rachel Menzies researches the role of death anxiety in mental health. She is passionate about ancient history and psychology. From Gilgamesh and Persephone, to the local death café and anxiety disorders, Rachel came to realise that a fear of death, and an avoidance of talking about it, is…
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Driftwood and Beats
"It's very rare for me to lose that sense of my own heartbeat." Meeting on Gadigal/Wangal land prior to the Unspoken Words Festival, poet and percussionist Gabrielle Journey Jones performed The Happening for me. There's a heartbeat drum at the pulse Twenty-four hours in the zone - never alone -...
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Life, Death and Poetry
"The many different angles of grief that hadn't occurred to me until my own father. It hadn't occurred to me that there was more than one thing to miss. And it's not always good stuff that you miss." Poet, Ali Whitelock, and I talk about the unexpected death of her father, a man with whom she had…
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Psychology and Lore
Jenny and I are in an Open Dialogue group that examines how Western psychology is linked to colonisation. Both emerge from the same place. Because of this, psychology can sometimes do harm to people who have been colonised. In the group, we look at ways our own psychology practice can perpetuate...
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The River
Sadiya and Sarah are part of Stop Adani. It is an environmental movement working to block the development of the Adani Carmichael coal mine in the north of the Galilee Basin, Central Queensland, Australia. Last episode, Sarah told a story for Sadiya to reflect on. In this episode, Sadiya tells us…
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Stop Adani
Sarah Ellyard's childhood, spent camping and bushwalking with her wilderness conservation father, explains her connection to the environment, and her ability to understand its importance to our health, physical and mental. She finds it hard to understand why Western society places such a low…
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Expectations on Manus
"I am a drop waiting to return to the ocean" Mohammad Ali Maleki is incarcerated on Manus Island. Five years ago, he attempted to seek asylum in Australia and, for this, he was detained. An Iranian poet, Mohammad writes in Farsi. His friend, Mansour Shoushtari, translates the poetry into English,...
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Auntie Josie
This interview with Auntie Josie is to acknowledge and celebrate NAIDOC week, 2018. Auntie Josie is from the Wailwan nation. She is a First Nations Person. We were speaking on Darug land. I am deeply grateful and honoured that she has shared some of the stories of her life with me. These stories...
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A Conversation with Merle Conyer
Introduction to Conversation with Merle Conyer I talk to Merle Conyer. I had a particular question, about the interface between Western psychology and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge. I'm exploring that because of a work role I'll be taking up soon, as part of the Creating Space...
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Drinking in Laughter
Jennifer Jones lives in Myanmar and co-founded the Room to Grow Foundation. She works with children: Unaccompanied refugee children who have experienced enormous trauma. They have swum rivers while bullets fly overhead. They have worked in factories. They have foraged for discarded cabbage leaves...
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Freedom for West Papua
Rebecca Langley is an Australian woman who has become involved as an ally in the movement for freedom in West Papua. Recently, she has been a supporter in the Let's Talk About West Papua campaign that has been launched in Australia, which aims to address the ways in which Australia supports...
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Teddy Bear
Amy Martinez listens to the story of Isabelle from Belle and the Bear, in which Isabelle's bear was stolen by her mother's abusive partner. "I feel like [the teddy bear] stands for something else that has been taken away from her." The sadness that Amy feels for Isabelle relates also to her own...
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The Balloon
"Hope is a spacious place. It's so full of possibility." Chantale has a way with words that is a little hypnotic. And she has a way with ideas. Hope, for her, is a red balloon that expands your chest so you can breathe a little more easily. Much like her balloon, or more accurately, because of…
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Nudging the Herd
I'm excited by this episode. I love all of the interviews I do (maybe not my interviewing all the time, but I love all the stories) but this one was like interviewing the kind of person I hope to be in another decade or so – still committed to social justice, still passionate about what I do. Not...
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Somewhere Safe
Angela is amazing. Single mother of two kids. Assistant director in the city. Courageous, empathic and generous. I played her Amanda's story from Red Flags and then we talked about it. Domestic violence is hard. I struggled to ask Angela about it and I feel a bit ashamed of that. Remembering…
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Belle and the Bear
Isabelle is the twelve-year-old daughter of Amanda, who talked about domestic violence in the episode Red Flags. Resilient and insightful, Isabelle talks about her mother's abusive partner stealing her teddy bear when she was six years old. "I was just an angry child because I lost my teddy…
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Red Flags
"Why doesn't she just leave him?" Trigger warning: Domestic violence. Amanda Cosgrove describes how it took five years to leave a man who was abusing her and the strategies that he used to manipulate his way into remaining in her life, including using her children and slowly undermining her…
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Equally Wed
Nivelo started Equally Wed in the faith that one day, Australia would enact marriage equality. A wedding directory catering for gay, lesbian, queer and transgendered couples, Equally Wed reflects Niv's belief in equality and civil rights. "The reason why I really started this business was so that...
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Happiness is Transient
A child with a disability taught retired teacher, Elizabeth Appleyard, an important lesson on mental health and wellbeing. In a class exercise, when other children were wishing for material items, this child wished for a new hand. At the same time, this child appeared to be an essentially happy...
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Bundjalung Woman
Dei Phillips is a Bundjalung woman. Fierce and compassionate, she is relentless as an activist and advocate for Aboriginal people in Australia. In trying to arrange this interview, we kept having to postpone. Dei is always busy, whether it be marching on Invasion/Survival Day or seeking legal...
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Hostage in Iraq
Teresa Benetos was a nurse in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. She's writing a memoir about her time as a hostage in Iraq. Growing up in a traditional Irish Catholic household, it has taken many years for Teresa to realise that, as a woman, her story is of interest. After thirty years,...
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Bearing Witness: The Creating Space Project Backstory - Part Two
This episode is part-two of Bearing Witness: The backstory to Creating Space where we hear the inspiring yarn behind Ruth Nelson and how this podcast came into being. In the first episode we followed Ruth who, as an 18-year-old, inadvertently signed up to volunteer in community work with refugees...
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Bearing Witness: The Backstory to the Creating Space Project
It seemed remiss - to me at least - with all the stories that have been shared by this project of ordinary, yet extraordinary women, it had not featured the captivating journey of its creator, Ruth Nelson. It took 12 months and some gentle persuasion for Ruth to acquiesce to my appeal for an...
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God Created Queers Part Two
Rachael Vincent talks about the emotional impact of the postal survey on same sex marriage, or marriage equality, in Australia. It has been frightening and deeply upsetting for the GLBTQIA community to be confronted with people's level of fear and hatred. "The license given to people to say…
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God Created Queers Part One
Most of us aren't very good at changing our minds. Beliefs that we have held since childhood can be very resistant to change. If we have been raised to understand that marriage is between a man and a woman, we often believe that to be "natural" or the "way it should be." This is especially true…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
In the Creating Space Project, Ruth Nelson asks women to share a moment from their lives. The moment is used to uncover their personal values and beliefs. From ordinary women, come stories that are real and inspiring.
HOSTED BY
Ruth Nelson
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Creating Space Project have?
Creating Space Project currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Creating Space Project about?
In the Creating Space Project, Ruth Nelson asks women to share a moment from their lives. The moment is used to uncover their personal values and beliefs. From ordinary women, come stories that are real and inspiring.
How often does Creating Space Project release new episodes?
Creating Space Project has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Creating Space Project?
You can listen to Creating Space Project on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Creating Space Project?
Creating Space Project is created and hosted by Ruth Nelson.
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