Art, Motherhood & Creative Health
I quickly realised that I needed a whole new map of my city: one that outlined the best places to meet, sit, feed without feeling awkward or in the way. better still, I needed places with built-in free activities ; mother groups, childrens activities for friends with toddlers and anywhere, ANYWHERE WITH CAKE.
At Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, The Ecology of Care explored themes of motherhood, care, and connection through art, photography, and music—highlighting community, resilience, and maternal wellbeing.
Researchers at Wolverhampton University are gathering data on Holding Time’s impact on the community online and offline through surveys about breastfeeding attitudes
In this BLOG post Dr Lisa J. Orchard, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Faculty of Education, Health and Wellbeing at the University of Wolverhampton, introduces their innovative study, designed to measure the impact of the Holding Time Project on viewers. Please add your data to the survey!
The Holding Time Project exhibited at MC Gallery in Wolverhampton from July to September 2022, presenting photographic portraits, stop-motion animations and mothers’ stories exploring breastfeeding and maternal experience. Alongside the exhibition, researchers from the University of Wolverhampton investigated how art could influence public attitudes towards breastfeeding. The exhibition marked an important stage in Holding Time’s development as a collaborative creative health project combining artistic practice, lived experience and academic research.
Let Mothers Be Well reflects on Holding Time’s Maternal Wellbeing Afternoon at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. The event combined breastfeeding storytelling workshops, a marketplace of maternity and family services, the Holding Time exhibition, peer-support discussion, live harp and a Singing Mamas workshop, creating a model for creative, social and community-based maternal wellbeing support.
Breastfeeding has profound and long-lasting health advantages, but the risks of poor maternal well-being run just as deep. The “breast is best” message has, in many cases, done more harm than good for both breastfeeding and formula feeding women. Words carry a lot of power and we need to be very careful of their use in future breastfeeding promotion campaigns.
For many, the current WHO recommendation of six months of exclusive breastfeeding is simply not realistic and can discourage mothers from even initiating breastfeeding. Instead we should follow a woman-centred approach where mothers are empowered to set their own realistic targets.
With an audience of NHS staff, the social prescribing Team from WHAM, members of the local CCG and local breastfeeding mentors, the performances by mothers were entertaining, moving and full of meaning.
This year I received a prestigious DYCP Arts Council grant to explore the possibilities of Holding Time in VR. I set about researching the potential of VR to be a new way of showing the animation installation without the need for a ‘real’ space.
The Holding Time Project launched in Cheshire and Merseyside at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery on 19 November 2021, as part of Baby Week. Supported by WHAM, the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s and Children’s Partnership, the event brought together photography, mothers’ interviews, poetry and creative health research. Led by artist Lisa Creagh, Holding Time explored the cultural, emotional and practical barriers to breastfeeding while celebrating the diversity of mothers’ experiences across the region.
In June 2021, the Holding Time Project presented an exhibition of photographic portraits and animations at Arcadia Gallery in Coventry’s City Arcade. Created by artist Lisa Creagh in collaboration with local breastfeeding mothers, the exhibition celebrated the diversity of maternal experiences while challenging cultural stereotypes and stigma surrounding breastfeeding. The exhibition formed part of Coventry City of Breastfeeding, a city-wide programme combining photography, storytelling, film and public engagement.
In Coventry Daze, Lisa Creagh reflects on creating Holding Time’s Coventry project during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mothers from diverse backgrounds took part in Zoom interviews, storytelling workshops, portrait sessions and exhibitions, resulting in writing, animated portraits, films and permanent hospital artworks. The project celebrated breastfeeding while exploring cultural, structural and emotional barriers.
In this Holding Time article, postnatal lead midwife Angelina Steinegger reflects on bonding and attachment in the first hours, weeks and months of a baby’s life. She explores the importance of holding, talking, singing, massage, skin-to-skin contact and responsive caregiving, while reassuring parents that bonding is a gradual process rather than something that must happen immediately after birth.
AAF asked me to take over their Instagram feed one Tuesday recently and I had to accept, given their huge…
In my aim to bring The Holding Time Project to areas where breastfeeding is lowest, I came to appreciate the…
I spoke about my project and the aims of partnering with the CTU for Coventry City of Culture. I showed the animated portraits, as well as a slideshow of stills. it was the first time I had presented the work in a meidcal setting and I found the atmosphere invigorating. It gave me new insight into how clinical trials lead the way to greater understanding of new approaches.
For this event I put together a slideshow, beginning with the story of my own struggles to breastfeed, then the rationale for the Holding Time still images, how these lead to the animation and installation. Finally I talked about the project website, the breastfeeding Hubs, the YouTube Channel interviews.
by Lisa Creagh, First published at http://www.lisacreagh.com, July 2018 The theme of this years’ Photography festival Recontres d’Arles was Geopolitics,…
In this personal reflection on Holding Time’s 2019 exhibition at ONCA Gallery in Brighton, artist Lisa Creagh explores the powerful conversations sparked by photographic portraits of breastfeeding mothers. Visitors shared experiences of isolation, conflicting medical advice, family pressures and cultural stigma, revealing how breastfeeding is shaped by social expectations as much as individual choice. The exhibition demonstrated the potential of art to create welcoming spaces for dialogue, challenge assumptions and connect mothers, families and healthcare professionals.
Why do so many mothers stop breastfeeding before they want to? In this foundational 2019 article, the Holding Time Project examines breastfeeding inequalities, declining support services and the cultural attitudes that make breastfeeding difficult. Drawing on public health research and mothers’ experiences in Brighton, the article argues that breastfeeding should not be viewed solely as an individual responsibility, but as something requiring collective social, cultural and political support.
Breastfeeding is food. It is part of the wider network of food production and relations. The food of love, as it has been called. And it is. Breastfeeding provides sustenance and nourishment and love in one swift gesture.
