OXYTOCIN - COLLECTIVE CARE
PROGRAMME 2023

PROGRAMME - Saturday 13th May Middlesex University

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• 9:30AM - Doors Open

• 10:30AM - 12PM - Panel 1 – ‘Decolonising maternity care’ - with BSL interpreter
  
  Speakers:
   

• Amali Lokugamage - Amali is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, author of The Heart of the Womb, and an honorary associate professor, Institute of Women’s Health, UCL. She has been a long-standing advocate in respectful maternity care, human rights in healthcare, equality/diversity and decolonisation with particular interest in power imbalances.

• Anna Horn (chair) - Anna is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research at City, University of London. Her special interests include: Black feminist theory, reproduction, motherhood, cultural safety and decolonisation. She is also a trained doula and breastfeeding counsellor.

• Chaneen Saliee – Chaneen is a Black Mumfluencer, artist and poet.

• Krishna Istha - Krishna is a screenwriter, comedian, performance artist and theatre maker, currently working on a new performance piece M/Otherhood, exploring the process of becoming pregnant as a trans artist of colour.

• Lola Ornato – Lola is a midwifery lecturer at Middlesex University who will speak on ‘embracing your heritage as a means of decolonising midwifery’.
  
  12 - 2.30 PM - Lunch Break [please note this is not provided, if you need any information regarding facilities in and near the campus get in touch via email]

• 12 - 1.30 PM - Maternal Journal workshop facilitated by multidisciplinary artist Maria Pia Jaime
  Maternal Journal is an award-winning global community movement that uses creative journaling to boost wellbeing in pregnancy, birth and parenthood. Free journaling resources and guided exercises introduce different creative styles and techniques to help you get started. Join a taster workshop with artist Pia Jaime - no experience needed, materials will be provided.
  
  12 - 2.30PM - The programme of performances will be staged around the Middlesex University Campus. A printed programme will be available on the day, with times, durations and a map.
  
  Performances
   

• ALERO: A live sound art and visual piece highlight the invisibility and silence that has been forced onto queer, BIPOC-birthing people and parents, through the use of words, text, silence and noise.

• Rubiane Maia : 'Each bone is an affirmation of life. Just to make sure yes is yes, I ask again and again and again…’, Chapter V of the Book-Performance, a new live action revisiting aspect of her experience of postpartum collapse, facing the challenge of becoming a mother in a colonial and patriarchal society.

• Laima Leyton: a sound/visual performance collecting and highlighting the experience of giving birth from the perspective of disabled parents and the ones assessed as high risk.

• Vanio Papadelli: 'Laughing Gas' , a solo performance reimagining of perinatal trauma into a choreographic, textural and visual landscape where loss, absence and pain simultaneously pulsate with wild joy and longing for aliveness.

• Mee Jey: ‘Hear Me Now’, a text based performance highlighting the racial disparity in maternal health and death rate of women of colour.

• Rebecca Weeks: ‘Endling’ a performance and act of resistance about the experience of infertility, abuse and discrimination within infertility treatment, miscarriage and grief.
   

• 2.30 - 4PM - Panel 2 – ‘Exploring the experiences of deaf and disabled people in maternity care’ with BSL interpreters
  
  Speakers
   

• Meghan Luton – Meghan is a Middlesex university midwifery lecturer researching deaf women’s experiences of maternity care.

• Natalie Whyte - Natalie is part of the Mum-PreDiCT project (exploring the experiences of pregnant people with 2 or more long term health conditions),user voice representative for the Midlands for maternity services, maternal medicine engagement lead for the West Midlands.

• Sahera Khan - Sahera is a Deaf, Muslim, BSL user and a freelance writer/creator, artist/actor, filmmaker and YouTuber. She is a Trustee of Deaf Ethnic Women’s Association (DEWA).

• Dr Hannah Barham-Brown (chair) - Hannah is a GP trainee in Yorkshire, Governor of Motability and Deputy Leader of the Women’s Equality Party with the portfolio for ‘Making Change Happen’. Between 2018 and 2022 she was a Council Member of the British Medical Association. Alongside her clinical and political work, she travels the UK giving talks about diversity and disability, in venues from the House of Lords to international publishing companies. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and works to support disabled people in politics, employment, travel, health and education.

• Tracey Norton - Tracey is a mother with an invisible disability whose severely disabled child was falsely taken into foster care to stop the financial support she had fought for so he could stay at home. She now supports other mothers, as well as campaigning for change with Support Not Separation and The Disabled Mothers' Rights Campaign (part of WinVisible, women with visible and invisible disabilities) based at the Crossroads Women's Centre, London.

• Dr Amy Kavanah - Amy is an award winning disability consultant, activist and campaigner. She uses social media to share her lived experience navigating the world as a blind Londoner alongside her Guide Dog Ava. Amy has recently become a mother and believes in the need for greater representation and discussion of disabled parenthood. Amy is committed to celebrating disability, mobility aids and encouraging others to learn about the social model of disability.
  
  * Access information:

• All venue is wheelchair accessible

• - BSL interpreters are provided for both panel discussion(Interpreters won't be available during breaks or performances)

• - live captions for the talks are to be confirmed ASAP.

• - A family room with resources and activities for children is available and children are welcome at all times.

• - Access support companions have a free tickets to all events part of this programme

• If you require any other access support please email events@procreateproject.com
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  PROGRAMME Saturday 20th May - Science Gallery London King's College Guy's Campus
   

• 10.00 AM Doors Open
   

• 10.30 AM - 11.30 AM - Birth Cafe with Laura Godfrey Isaacs - Whilst some of us may birth, all of us are born. The aim of Birth Café is to foster and support conversations about birth in order to build understanding and respect for its psychosocial, cultural and bodily significance for everyone. Birth Café takes its lead from the Death Café movement, helping to provide a safe, non-judgmental space in which anyone and everyone is welcome to come and discuss their relationship to, and concept of birth.
  Laura is an artist, midwife, award-winning author and birth activist, combining her artistic and healthcare practice, to bring fresh interdisciplinary perspectives to support reproductive justice, and evolve feminist readings of the body.
   

• 11.30 AM - Performance by Portia Yung Li
   

• 12-1.30PM - Inclusive Infant Feeding workshop with Anna Horn - In a lecture and an interactive workshop, we draw on the Black feminist tradition of storytelling to explore the intersectionality of infant feeding. Through lived experiences we illuminate the systemic, cultural, and political drivers which shape how we choose to feed our babies. Making connections from the single story to the wider phenomenon of infant feeding in Western societies (namely the US and the UK), we utilise the knowledges within the room to collectively re-imagine radical, life-affirming infant feeding support. Participants are invited to take part in cultivating a safe space for collective learning and sharing as we traverse the landscapes of infant feeding through different bodies - racialised, gendered, differently abled, and socially divided bodies.
   

• 1.15 - 2PM - Lunch Break [please note this is not provided, if you need any information regarding facilities in and near the venue get in touch via email]
   

• 2PM - Performance by Guadalupe Aldrete - Some say that the way we are born, and what we experience immediately afterwards, has a great influence on us; on our personality and even the way we give birth. This performance revisits the violent birth of Guadalupe’s daughter and the trauma and disability she experienced as a result of it.
   

• 2.45PM - Tea Break [please note drinks are not provided with the tickets]
   

• 3-4.30PM - Collective Care Workshop - All the participants will be invited in a group interactive workshop to look into the future and find ways to establish inclusive and collective care systems for micro and macro changes.
   

• 4.30PM - Closing performance by Dagmara Bilon 'Homeless Garden', co-commissioned by The Place and Procreate Project.
  A performance installation that aims to explore themes of migration, community, home and belonging, with birth stories from diverse social, economic and cultural backgrounds.
   

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  * Image credits: Rubiane Maia, design co-co.it
  The project is supported by the National Lottery Arts Council England, The Middlesex University and the Science Gallery London at King's College London.
  The platform was conceived and curated by Dyana Gravina as part of Procreate Project. The panels of this edition have been curated by Laura Godfrey Issacs.