Would you like to deepen your understanding of childbirth by engaging with art, critical perspectives, and creative practice? The Birth Rites Collection is inviting you to an autumn online course based on their unique collection. Raquel Gonzalez Marketing & Communications Intern and Helen Knowles, Curator/Director, Birth Rites collection, share the information.
This November and December, the Birth Rites Collection invites you to take part in our Autumn Programme 2025—a unique four-week online course of lectures, workshops, seminars, and one-to-one tutorials built around the world’s first and only contemporary art collection dedicated to childbirth.
BRC Autumn Program 2025 will introduce you to the collection and facilitate a dialogue between you, your practice, this year’s themes and the artworks. The course will empower you to articulate your own practice and responses to the collection in a supportive environment whilst exploring critical perspectives in the field of birth. The course is led by artist and BRC Curator and artist, Dr. Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan.
Midwives, academics, curators, artists, medics, health professionals, art historians, policy advisors and the general public interested in childbirth through the lens of art, are all welcome. As a participant, you will enter the course with your own skill set and finish, with bespoke visual, textual, auditory, photographic, filmic and/or performative material, to be used thereafter in your own future work.
Workshops will include exploring the aesthetic, ethical, political and visual discourses of birth via text, film, and performance. Additionally, this year, we present a unique opportunity to engage with a curated selection of works from the collection that are not ordinarily accessible to the public. In a dedicated online space these pieces will enrich participants’ engagement of the autumn programme’s themes.
Through lectures by leading artists in the field, we will introduce different perspectives to initiate in-depth discussions.
Key themes include:
- Navigating mortality, from preterm birth to post-partum
- Artistic responses to preterm birth
- How the Collection informs perspectives in midwifery, medicine, and education, and its potential to influence practice and policy
- The Collection’s impact on feminist art practices and the reintegration of birth into art history
- Censorship of artworks on birth, institutional responses, ethics, and the law
Special focus – Preterm Birth
In 2024, the Birth Rites Collection began a landmark partnership with Tommy’s National Centre for Preterm Birth Research and Imperial College London, commissioning new participatory artworks on preterm birth.
As part of the Autumn Programme, participants will have the chance to hear from different invited speakers, including Courtney Conrad, an award-winning Jamaican poet whose work explores migration, womanhood, and resilience. For her commission, Conrad interviewed Black midwives and women about their experiences of preterm birth, shaping their voices into poems and leading workshops where participants could craft their own narratives. On Shift emerged from this process — a reflection of love, loss, and the unbreakable bond between mothers and the children they fight to hold onto, and the duty of care midwives possess.
On Shift – Courtney Conrad
Listen to an extract from the one of the unique recordings now held in the Birth Rites Collection, On Shift by Courtney Conrad. Courtesy of the artist and Birth Rites Collection. The work has been commissioned by Tommy’s National Centre for Preterm Birth Research, Imperial College, London and the Birth Rites Collection.
Register your place
This is a wonderful opportunity to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community and explore birth through art, dialogue, and creative practice.
Four-Week Course (Online)
📅 Wednesdays: Nov 19 & 26, Dec 3 & 10 (7:00–9:30 PM GMT)
📅 Saturday: Dec 6 (2:00–5:00 PM GMT)
💻 All sessions online
🎟️ One bursary place available
➡️ Cost: 550GBP per person 400GBP Concession Rate.
👉 Book your place or learn more: Autumn Programme page
Raquel Gonzalez
Marketing & Communications Intern
(Funded by ArtFund)
Birth Rites Collection
Helen Knowles
Curator / Director
Birth Rites Collection
September 2025