Our Guiding Principles

Mindful Mob Wellness Institute is guided by principles shaped through decades of community practice, cultural learning, and lived experience led by the collective. 


These guiding principles shape:

  • How we design healing arts spaces and programs
  • How we approach, choose partners and collaborators
  • How we protect cultural integrity
  • How we remain accountable to community

They apply across all Mindful Mob work — locally and globally.


A Living Commitment

Our guiding principles are living commitments. They are reviewed, reflected on, and strengthened through community accountability, cultural guidance, and ongoing learning.

They guide how we show up, how we work with others, and how we carry this work with care over time:

  • First Nations First:

    We support First Nations cultural values and sciences. We recognise our role in caring for Mother Earth and raising awareness of the issues that affect First Nations peoples across the communities and globe.

  • Cultural Safety:

    We support a culturally safe and inclusive environment for any person, regardless of their gender, religion, background, social status and beliefs to share what inspires them on their healing journey.

  • Cultural Currency Exchange:

    We embrace cultural gift sharing inspired by the ancient ways of our Indigenous people across the world. Through exchanging talents, knowledge, practices, and advice, we foster a community based on mutual respect and cooperation. This exchange, rooted in good faith, giving, and sharing, enhances healing efforts and builds deeper connections, promoting holistic well-being and self determination.

  • The Gift of Sharing:

    Mindful Mob relies solely on the participation of our members and commits to programs that support our collective interests. We strive to maintain an environment where there is a continuous knowledge exchange.

  • To Heal and Be Healed:

    We acknowledge that our human experience is a journey of beauty, joy, grief and suffering. We know that we are stronger together as we face the unpredictability of life. We believe that we can build a healthier community when we heal our inner wounds and lived trauma. We believe that this is the way to create a safer and more peaceful world for the generations to come.

Holding Sacred Work with Care

Some cultural healing work is held privately and shared through relationship and community consent, rather than public platforms.

We honour cultural authority, confidentiality and the right of communities to decide how and when their stories and healing are shared.

Restoring Cultural Healing through the Healing Arts

We work to restore cultural healing practices that were interrupted through colonisation and its ongoing impacts, including cultural suppression, dispossession and disconnection from Country.

This work sits within the healing arts — where creativity, culture and spiritual health come together. It honours the ways our people have always healed through story, ceremony, movement, music, gathering and connection to Country.

Our work began in the arts and continues across creative spaces, festivals, institutions and wellbeing sectors. Through this work, we support approaches to healing that are ethical, relational and culturally informed, ensuring cultural knowledge is respected rather than extracted.

From this foundation, our work extends across sectors while remaining accountable to Traditional Owners, Elders and community.

Our Understanding of Well-being
We align with Aboriginal understandings of social and emotional well-being, which recognise that well-being is more than emotional and physical health.
It includes spirit, identity, community and the relationships between them in everyday life.

 

Gee, G., Dudgeon, P., Schultz, C., Hart, A., & Kelly, K. (2013). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing. In P. Dudgeon, H. Milroy & R. Walker (Eds.), Working Together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Wellbeing – Principles and Practice (pp. 55–68). Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.