Guest Speakers
Tahmina Ali
Tahmina Ali is a British Bangladeshi, Newcastle-upon-Tyne based spoken word poet, creative freelancer and young mother. Poetry has been a significant tool in Tahmina's life, it gave her a voice at a time where she felt voiceless. Now through her workshops Tahmina aims to pass on those very tools to others.
Tahmina has performed at various events, poetry nights across the country and selected for the prestigious BBC Words First programme. Also presented her poetry radio show on Fast FM for two years running, hosts her own Open Mic poetry night called Strictly Spoken and has been awarded the ‘ABC Arts and Culture Award’ for 2018 and 2019. Tahmina uses her poetry as a means to encourage positive change, her writing is generally influenced by identity, culture, social events and life as a young mother.
Dyana Gravina
Dyana Gravina (They/She) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, birth Doula and activist, mover, and community builder. She is the founding director of Procreate Project, a pioneering arts organisation dedicated to (m)others and primary care givers creating systemic change across cultural sectors and the Mother House Studios, an artists’ studio model with integrated care. MA in 'Gender Sexuality and Culture' at Birkbeck University. Procreate Project (PCP) has become a socio-cultural movement recognised in the UK with international reverberance. It was born out of the personal experience of pregnancy and the shocking reality of the lack of support and representation that forces primary caregivers outside the creative industries. Under this umbrella, Dyana has developed for over a decade a curatorial and organisational practice that pushes the boundaries of what we showcase, where we showcase it and how people experience it. They have been providing new references for models that have inspired a sea-change across sectors; integrating ways we perceive and balance the private, the domestic and the public, and the perception and normalisation of carers’ artistic output as part of the cultural and social landscape. Dyana's artistic and curatorial practices are interested in intersectional feminisms, migration, and body politics manifesting in a transdisciplinary body of work that combines writing, movement, actions, photography, sculptural installations and video.
They have collaborated and curated projects with partners and venues including RCA, King’s College London, LADA Live Art Development Agency, Ugly Duck, Mimosa House, Women's Art Library, RichMix, Richard Saltoun Gallery, 198 contemporary Art and Learning, to mention a few. Her performance actions and performative lectures have been shown and hosted in the UK and internationally including, East Street Arts, Wellcome Collection, ]Performance Space[, Leyden Gallery, The Yard Theatre, Institute Centre of Photography ICP ( NYC), Art Basel / Richard Saltoun Gallery, Minusoffspace (Vienna), Unit London, Menoparkas Gallery (Kaunas), Gruentaler9 (Berlin).
Hettie Judah
Hettie Judah is chief art critic on the British daily paper The i, a regular contributor to The Guardian’s arts pages, and a columnist for Apollo magazine. She writes for Frieze, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, ArtReview and is a contributing editor to The Plant magazine. Following publication of her 2020 study on the impact of motherhood on artists’ careers, in 2021 she worked with a group of artists to draw up the manifesto How Not To Exclude Artist Parents, now available in 15 languages. She regularly talks about art and with artists for museum and gallery events, and has been a visiting lecturer for Goldsmiths University, London and Dauphine University, Paris.
A supporter of Arts Emergency she has mentored artists and students through a variety of different schemes. As a broadcaster she can be heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Art That Made Us. Recent books include How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (Lund Humphries, September 2022) and Lapidarium (John Murray, London, October 2022/ Penguin, NY, March 2023). She is currently working on an exhibition and book on art and motherhood, among other things.
Lady Kitt
Lady Kitt is an artist, mam, researcher & drag king proudly from, and based in, the North East of England. They call their work “Mess Making as Social Glue”- driven by insatiably curiosity about the social functions of stuff that gets called art. Kitt invites people to join them in creating objects, interactions & events. They are most interested in using collaborative creativity to (gently) dismantle and mischievously re-craft systems, structures and spaces they find discriminatory, obsolete or just quite dull. Some of the things that have happened as part of Kitt’s work are: super-sized origami boat races, giant installations made from recycled paper, policy changes & the creation of an international feminist art magazine for, and by, children. Kitt is a co-lead for Social Art Network (SAN), trustee for Crafts Council UK, and a founding member of the award winning disabled artist led “art rabble” kin collective.
Image description: Colour photo, interior. A white human with a shaved head and a big smile wears a headdress made of huge multi coloured flowers and a black long-sleeved shirt on which white and orange text reads “queer crip craft power”.
Lauren McLaughlin
Lauren McLaughlin is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer based in the North East of Scotland. She is also the founding director of Spilt Milk Gallery CIC; a social enterprise whose mission is to promote the work of artists who identify as (m)others, and to empower (m)others in the community through socially engaged activity. Lauren graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London in 2012, and MA Applied Arts & Social Practice from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh in 2021. Her work has been shown Nationally and Internationally, recent exhibitions include Formula for Care at Tonic Arts and NHS Lothian Charity, Artist/Parent at AIR Gallery Manchester, Embracing our Differences Billboard Exhibition, Florida USA, and The Royal Scottish Academy’s 198th Annual Exhibition, Edinburgh. Lauren’s work is included in the Birth Rites Collection; a permanent, public collection of artworks exploring the theme of birth, currently housed at The University of Kent. Her practice has been publicly funded by Creative Scotland, King’s College Cultural Institute, The Hope Scott Trust, Magnetic North and Aberdeen City Council.
Rebecca Morrill
Rebecca Morrill is an art book editor, writer and former curator. Currently Executive Commissioning Editor at HENI Publishing, she was previously Commissioning Editor at Phaidon Press where she oversaw survey books including the Great Women Artists and Vitamin series. Having championed Hettie Judah's Acts of Creation: Motherhood in Art in its earliest stages, she returned to the project to freelance copyedit the book in 2023.
Martina Mullaney
Dr Martina Mullaney is a practicing artist and academic. She is the research Co-Ordinator for FilmEU European University at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin, Ireland. Formally the Irish Post Doc. Researcher for the joint funded Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK)/Irish Research Council Feminist Art Making Histories Project. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art, London and AHRC-funded Ph.D. from the University of Reading. Her research asks ‘how art on and of maternity can transcend its own audience? She convened The Missing Mother Conference from which this publication comes. She is a recipient of the Red Mansion Art Prize, London, and China, she has been artist in residence with BALENCIAGA, Paris, The British Council in Sri Lanka, and Tbilisi, Georgia, The Gallery of Photography, Dublin. Her work has shown at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, Franekel Gallery, San Francisco, Artwall Gallery, Prague and Cork Film Center, Ireland. She founded Enemies of Good Art in London after the birth of her child. Events took place at; Tate Modern, the ICA, Southbank Centre and Chisenhale Gallery. Tranzit Display Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic and Galerija Nova, Zagreb in 2015. Enemies of God Art also broadcast on Resonance 104.4FM
The NewBridge Project
The NewBridge Project supports artists, curators, and communities through the provision of space for creative practice, curatorial opportunities and an ambitious artist-led programme of exhibitions, commissions, artist development and events.
The NewBridge Project was established in 2010 to provide exchange and support in an engaged community of artists, and our public spaces are places where artists and local communities can come together to work, learn and socialise with each other.
Our work with artists is rooted in practices of listening, learning, and responding to need – proactively creating support and opportunities with people historically marginalised from art spaces. In recent years, our partnership with MOTHEROTHER and work with artist Lady Kitt has created space to reflect on the experiences of artists and art workers with caring responsibilities, aiming to embed change within our organisation and close the gap between our values, policy, and practice.
Joining on the day was be Rebecca Huggan (Director), Frances Stacey (Programme Director) and Dan Russell (Artist Development Programmer), discussing: Care in Practice and Policy
Helix Arts
Helix Arts is an arts charity collaborating and connecting with local communities. We have worked for almost 40 years to support community members and artists to work together to bring about meaningful changes to their health, their prospects, their communities, and their environments.
Helix Arts knows that it is our everyday cultures and creativity that make us human, and that, together, we can produce amazing art that begins to address the many issues facing us. We are committed to overcoming obstacles to arts access and participation, to increasing equality of opportunity with diverse communities and to breaking down barriers between artists and communities.
As a people-led and values-led organisation, Helix has been an advocate for and sponsor of the MOTHEROTHER project.
Dr Stephen Pritchard (Deputy Director) represented Helix on the day discussing: Caring Creatively: Participants; Practitioners; Partnership