
Lived Experience Mental Health Recovery Collaborator
At The Lived Perspective you are the expert in your own personal journey.
At The Lived Perspective you are the expert in your own personal journey.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, live and play.
We celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples, their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of this place in which we also dwell.
We pay our respects to Elders past, present and knowledge holders and acknowledge that even in the digital sphere, all that we do is done with feet planted firmly on Country rich in First Nation's People's Heritage and Tradition.
We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded and carry this truth with us in our day and all our days to come as we seek to honour the Wisdom of the Ancestors and play our own rightful part as Second Nations People.
The Lived Perspective specialises in mental health recovery supports, peer workforce supervision, co-design and consultancy. Lived experienced recovery practitioners draw upon person-centred, trauma-informed approaches. Here you will be supported to find the courage and strength to explore, realise and unleash your own self-determined potential. You will be encouraged to explore your own self-determined recovery pathways and supported to activate your own cultures and languages of optimism hope.
Fi Peel (they/them) is a lived experience recovery collaborator working independently under a sometimes model. They are a sometimes peer worker; sometimes peer workforce supervisor; sometimes co-designer; sometimes consultant; sometimes policy advisor; sometimes consumer academic; sometimes human rights, LGBTQIA+, mental health and disability reform advocate; sometimes speaker; sometimes educator and sometimes mentor.
Under the banner of The Lived Perspective since its inception in 2020, Fi has provided NDIS psychosocial recovery coaching support; worked as an external peer workforce supervisor with FWLHD and WNSWLHD/Wellways; has been a presenter at TheMHS Learning Network Conferences in 2021 and 2022 as well as the Broken Hill Lived Experience Forum in 2022; has been a Suicide Prevention Outreach Team Co-designer and Reviewer with InsideOut Associates for ISLHD; and has provided lived experience perspectives to the development of the Western NSW Regional Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan with Western NSW PHN. They have worked as a consumer research assistant with ANU’s lived experience research unit ACACIA at NCEPH and have been involved in a range of lived experience consultation, policy advisory and co-design processes across the mental health and disability sector with peak bodies, organisations and arts festivals including National Mental Health Commission, MIFWA, Marathon Health, Uniting Care Australia, Consumer’s Health Forum of Australia, Sydney World Pride 2023, Canberra Writer’s Festival and Sydney Writer’s Festival. In 2022 Fi was also the recipient of a WWDA LEAD Scholarship and a member of the second Sync Australia cohort made possible by a funding partnership between Access Arts and Australia Council For The Arts. They are currently Lived Experience Australia's ACT Advisory Forum Coordinator and Consumer Representative to the National Mental Health Consumer Carer Forum as well as an ACT-based Accessible Arts Advisor.
They are also a ‘re-emerging’ artist, fusing cross-disciplinary explorations of the arts, health and behavioural sciences, to explore madness, voice, and authentic hope.
Since 2020 they have sought to break their institutional and medical model shackles in the production/direction of live performance with This Is My Brave Australia, and Keystone 1889’s Christmas Spectacular; in production support for The Cooperative, Lakespeare and Rebus Theatre; in the writing of non-fiction narratives with A zine by US, The Activist Practitioner and Mad In America; and op-ed pieces with the Western Advocate, Independent Australia and RiotAct. Alongside that were scripts written with Rebus Theatre and poems with Red Room Poetry; Shakespearean roles with Bathurst Shakespeare Players, operatic roles with The Cooperative and devised characters with Rebus Theatre. They also managed the executive production and hosting of the Communities of Collaboration Podcast in collaboration with Good Shout; the blending of paints, the pursuit of play and the relentless challenging of their own fears of mis-gendering as operatic dramatic soprano with The Song Company. Oriana Chorale and Barefoot Theatre.
Fi's areas of interest include complex trauma and mental health access barriers; developing structurally ethical supports for the sustainable development of the lived experience workforce; sparking conversation regarding the social determinants health in relation to intersectionality and positionality; deconstructing LGBTQIA+ and medical model perceptions of disability to create culturally safe inclusive environments; and activating arts-engagement to foster the co-creation of socially equitable worlds that can truly strengthen self-determined pathways to social healing and self-acceptance.
Fi can be regularly observed in unusual behaviours such as rehearsal engagement absorption; crafting worlds in words laser focus; stretching vocal cords and harmonic sequences in curious ways; clumsy and self-conscious dancing or wandering across unceded country lost in thought, with headphones blaring mixed playlists from Brahms to Broadway, always in search of the next strand of inspiration.
Diagnosis: Utterly Mad
Prognosis: Terminal
Treatment: Arts-On-Demand
Through the journey of the past three years of re-emergence from Lived Experience of mental health system’s navigation there has been great stumbling, healing, stumbling, healing, stumbling, healing and stumbling some more.
It isn’t easy to turn theory into practice whether it is in your own life, your work as peer worker, lived experience leader, consumer/carer academic, trauma-informed health service professional or an artist with physical and/or psychosocial disability. While 2022 has been awe-inspiring and expansive it has also at times been triggering and exhausting but what has been truly humbling has been the support of those inspired by the journey and inspiring the journey. People have wanted to know more about how to connect and network and engage. The conversation for Lived Experience-led initiatives is continuing to expand so in 2023 The Lived Perspective is branching out with a new initiative called The Lived Experience-Led Perspectives.
Maybe you have a new and innovative leadership idea or program that you want to work through in a supportive group coaching space. Maybe you have a lived experience story you want to explore through concept development and artistic process? Maybe you want a regular National zoom “Community of Lived Experience Practice” where you can meet other Lived Experience change makers from the comfort of your own home, in your pjs while sipping at Saturday morning coffee.? Maybe you want to find out who recommends what supervisors or coaches and hear who is opening up what grants opportunities? Maybe you want t o find someone more experienced along the journey that you want to invest more time in or offer something you have learned?
Here’s your chance to share your initial thoughts about what you might like to see in 2023. Please find some questions below to help scope a the creation of a space that you might want to be involved in.
This form will remain open until Friday 20th January. Please note I will be on leave from December 16th until January 16th but if you experience any problems with the form, please hit the button just to the right that says "GET IN TOUCH".
Thank you to all of you wonderful supporters of The Lived Perspective and the Communities of Collaboration Podcast out there. Looking forward to seeing you all in 2023
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul –
That sings the tune without words –
That never stops – at all –
- Emily Dickinson
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