Barbara Doran
Dr. Barbara Doran is a creative leader, artist, and researcher working at the intersection of art, health, and education.
Lives/Works on
Gadigal Country | Sydney, NSW
Professional role/s
Director of Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation program; Uber curator, SPHERE Knowledge Translation Platform
Affiliations
Transdisciplinary School, UTS
Arts
Visual arts; Crafts; Drama/Theatre; Film/Media Arts; Architecture/Environmental Design; Transdisciplinary arts
Arts health role/s
Advocacy/Policy Maker; Arts Health Practitioner/Program Facilitator; Consultant, Leader/Director; Professional Artist; Professional Educator; Researcher
Dr. Barbara Doran is a creative leader, artist, and researcher working at the intersection of art, health, and education. As Creative Lead for the SPHERE Knowledge Translation (KT) Platform and senior academic at the UTS TD School, she brings over 25 years of experience in advancing arts-based research and community engagement. Barbara’s practice spans visual, performative, and digital media, collaborating with diverse communities to make research accessible, embodied, and socially impactful. She champions the belief that everyone is a narrative practitioner, mobilising mediums and expressions beyond the written word to foster empathy, connection, and systems change. Barbara leads the curation and creative direction of public-facing projects such as ReBloom, Topsy Turvy, and The HIVE, and is the author of Creative Reboot, a practical handbook designed to help people from all walks of life reconnect with their creative potential. Her work builds capacity for relational care, collective imagination, and creative action across sectors and communities.
Barbara is an artist, researcher, and creative collaborator working across visual, performative, digital, and storytelling practices. Her work moves between personal and playful explorations of creativity to large-scale collaborations with communities, health professionals, and researchers. Whether working with individuals, groups, or public audiences, Barbara creates spaces that invite people to reconnect with their imagination, express their stories, and explore new ways of seeing and making meaning together.